
#!pip install pandas scikit-learn seaborn textblob


from urllib.request import urlretrieve

urlretrieve('https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1260/pg1260.txt', 'jane_eyre.txt')

doc = open('jane_eyre.txt', 'r').readlines()


doc[:20]

['\ufeffThe Project Gutenberg eBook of Jane Eyre: An Autobiography\n',
 '    \n',
 'This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and\n',
 'most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions\n',
 'whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms\n',
 'of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online\n',
 'at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,\n',
 'you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located\n',
 'before using this eBook.\n',
 '\n',
 'Title: Jane Eyre: An Autobiography\n',
 '\n',
 'Author: Charlotte Brontë\n',
 '\n',
 'Illustrator: F. H. Townsend\n',
 '\n',
 'Release date: March 1, 1998 [eBook #1260]\n',
 '                Most recently updated: May 2, 2023\n',
 '\n',
 'Language: English\n']


chapter_idx = []

for idx, line in enumerate(doc):
    if 'CHAPTER' in line:
        chapter_idx.append((idx, line.strip()))
        
print(chapter_idx)

[(172, 'CHAPTER I'), (401, 'CHAPTER II'), (690, 'CHAPTER III'), (1088, 'CHAPTER IV'), (1737, 'CHAPTER V'), (2313, 'CHAPTER VI'), (2648, 'CHAPTER VII'), (3023, 'CHAPTER VIII'), (3354, 'CHAPTER IX'), (3707, 'CHAPTER X'), (4182, 'CHAPTER XI'), (4877, 'CHAPTER XII'), (5322, 'CHAPTER XIII'), (5854, 'CHAPTER XIV'), (6409, 'CHAPTER XV'), (6926, 'CHAPTER XVI'), (7348, 'CHAPTER XVII'), (8228, 'CHAPTER XVIII'), (8867, 'CHAPTER XIX'), (9387, 'CHAPTER XX'), (10110, 'CHAPTER XXI'), (11090, 'CHAPTER XXII'), (11373, 'CHAPTER XXIII'), (11858, 'CHAPTER XXIV'), (12712, 'CHAPTER XXV'), (13267, 'CHAPTER XXVI'), (13748, 'CHAPTER XXVII'), (14855, 'CHAPTER XXVIII'), (15614, 'CHAPTER XXIX'), (16161, 'CHAPTER XXX'), (16577, 'CHAPTER XXXI'), (16906, 'CHAPTER XXXII'), (17386, 'CHAPTER XXXIII'), (17990, 'CHAPTER XXXIV'), (18961, 'CHAPTER XXXV'), (19442, 'CHAPTER XXXVI'), (19872, 'CHAPTER XXXVII'), (20851, 'CHAPTER XXXVIII—CONCLUSION')]


chapter_texts = []

for idx, ch in enumerate(chapter_idx):
    # Skipping the first line of the section to cut out the chapter title
    start_line = ch[0]+1
    
    # Setting the end line of the chapter based on when the following chapter starts
    try:
        end_line = chapter_idx[idx+1][0]
    except:
        end_line = len(doc)
        
    # Adds text to the list of chapter texts
    chapter_texts.append(doc[start_line:end_line])


# the first ten lines from the preface
chapter_texts[0][:10]

['\n',
 '\n',
 'There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been\n',
 'wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning;\n',
 'but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early)\n',
 'the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain\n',
 'so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the\n',
 'question.\n',
 '\n',
 'I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly\n']


import re

# join the lines together first with nested list comprehensions while removing items that are only line breaks
joined_chs = [''.join([line for line in ch if line != '\n']) for ch in chapter_texts]

print(joined_chs)

['There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been\nwandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning;\nbut since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early)\nthe cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain\nso penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the\nquestion.\nI was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly\nafternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight,\nwith nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of\nBessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical\ninferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.\nThe said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama\nin the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and\nwith her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor\ncrying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the\ngroup; saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me\nat a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover\nby her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to\nacquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive\nand sprightly manner—something lighter, franker, more natural, as it\nwere—she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for\ncontented, happy, little children.”\n“What does Bessie say I have done?” I asked.\n“Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is\nsomething truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that\nmanner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain\nsilent.”\nA breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It\ncontained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care\nthat it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the\nwindow-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk;\nand, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in\ndouble retirement.\nFolds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left\nwere the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from\nthe drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of\nmy book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it\noffered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and\nstorm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a\nlong and lamentable blast.\nI returned to my book—Bewick’s History of British Birds: the\nletterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet\nthere were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not\npass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of\nsea-fowl; of “the solitary rocks and promontories” by them only\ninhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern\nextremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape—\n“Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,\nBoils round the naked, melancholy isles\nOf farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge\nPours in among the stormy Hebrides.”\nNor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of\nLapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with\n“the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary\nspace,—that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the\naccumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above\nheights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of\nextreme cold.” Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own:\nshadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through\nchildren’s brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these\nintroductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes,\nand gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow\nand spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold\nand ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just\nsinking.\nI cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard,\nwith its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon,\ngirdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the\nhour of eventide.\nThe two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine\nphantoms.\nThe fiend pinning down the thief’s pack behind him, I passed over\nquickly: it was an object of terror.\nSo was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a\ndistant crowd surrounding a gallows.\nEach picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped\nunderstanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting:\nas interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter\nevenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having\nbrought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit\nabout it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed’s lace frills, and crimped her\nnightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and\nadventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a\nlater period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of\nMoreland.\nWith Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way. I\nfeared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon. The\nbreakfast-room door opened.\n“Boh! Madam Mope!” cried the voice of John Reed; then he paused: he\nfound the room apparently empty.\n“Where the dickens is she!” he continued. “Lizzy! Georgy! (calling to\nhis sisters) Joan is not here: tell mama she is run out into the\nrain—bad animal!”\n“It is well I drew the curtain,” thought I; and I wished fervently he\nmight not discover my hiding-place: nor would John Reed have found it\nout himself; he was not quick either of vision or conception; but Eliza\njust put her head in at the door, and said at once—\n“She is in the window-seat, to be sure, Jack.”\nAnd I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged\nforth by the said Jack.\n“What do you want?” I asked, with awkward diffidence.\n“Say, ‘What do you want, Master Reed?’” was the answer. “I want you to\ncome here;” and seating himself in an arm-chair, he intimated by a\ngesture that I was to approach and stand before him.\nJohn Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than\nI, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a dingy and\nunwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs\nand large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at table, which\nmade him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks.\nHe ought now to have been at school; but his mama had taken him home\nfor a month or two, “on account of his delicate health.” Mr. Miles, the\nmaster, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and\nsweetmeats sent him from home; but the mother’s heart turned from an\nopinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that\nJohn’s sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining\nafter home.\nJohn had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an\nantipathy to me. He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in\nthe week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I\nhad feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he\ncame near. There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he\ninspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces\nor his inflictions; the servants did not like to offend their young\nmaster by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf\non the subject: she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though\nhe did both now and then in her very presence, more frequently,\nhowever, behind her back.\nHabitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair: he spent some\nthree minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could\nwithout damaging the roots: I knew he would soon strike, and while\ndreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him\nwho would presently deal it. I wonder if he read that notion in my\nface; for, all at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and\nstrongly. I tottered, and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a\nstep or two from his chair.\n“That is for your impudence in answering mama awhile since,” said he,\n“and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for the look\nyou had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!”\nAccustomed to John Reed’s abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it;\nmy care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the\ninsult.\n“What were you doing behind the curtain?” he asked.\n“I was reading.”\n“Show the book.”\nI returned to the window and fetched it thence.\n“You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama\nsays; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg,\nand not to live here with gentlemen’s children like us, and eat the\nsame meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama’s expense. Now, I’ll\nteach you to rummage my bookshelves: for they _are_ mine; all the house\nbelongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go and stand by the door, out\nof the way of the mirror and the windows.”\nI did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw him\nlift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively\nstarted aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume\nwas flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and\ncutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp: my terror had passed its\nclimax; other feelings succeeded.\n“Wicked and cruel boy!” I said. “You are like a murderer—you are like a\nslave-driver—you are like the Roman emperors!”\nI had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of\nNero, Caligula, &c. Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I\nnever thought thus to have declared aloud.\n“What! what!” he cried. “Did she say that to me? Did you hear her,\nEliza and Georgiana? Won’t I tell mama? but first—”\nHe ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had\nclosed with a desperate thing. I really saw in him a tyrant, a\nmurderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my\nneck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering: these sensations\nfor the time predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic\nsort. I don’t very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me\n“Rat! Rat!” and bellowed out aloud. Aid was near him: Eliza and\nGeorgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who was gone upstairs: she now came\nupon the scene, followed by Bessie and her maid Abbot. We were parted:\nI heard the words—\n“Dear! dear! What a fury to fly at Master John!”\n“Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!”\nThen Mrs. Reed subjoined—\n“Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there.” Four hands were\nimmediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.\n', 'I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance which\ngreatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were\ndisposed to entertain of me. The fact is, I was a trifle beside myself;\nor rather _out_ of myself, as the French would say: I was conscious\nthat a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange\npenalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my\ndesperation, to go all lengths.\n“Hold her arms, Miss Abbot: she’s like a mad cat.”\n“For shame! for shame!” cried the lady’s-maid. “What shocking conduct,\nMiss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress’s son! Your\nyoung master.”\n“Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?”\n“No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep.\nThere, sit down, and think over your wickedness.”\nThey had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed,\nand had thrust me upon a stool: my impulse was to rise from it like a\nspring; their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.\n“If you don’t sit still, you must be tied down,” said Bessie. “Miss\nAbbot, lend me your garters; she would break mine directly.”\nMiss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature. This\npreparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy it inferred, took a\nlittle of the excitement out of me.\n“Don’t take them off,” I cried; “I will not stir.”\nIn guarantee whereof, I attached myself to my seat by my hands.\n“Mind you don’t,” said Bessie; and when she had ascertained that I was\nreally subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss Abbot\nstood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as\nincredulous of my sanity.\n“She never did so before,” at last said Bessie, turning to the Abigail.\n“But it was always in her,” was the reply. “I’ve told Missis often my\nopinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me. She’s an underhand\nlittle thing: I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover.”\nBessie answered not; but ere long, addressing me, she said—\n“You ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs.\nReed: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go\nto the poorhouse.”\nI had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very\nfirst recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This\nreproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very\npainful and crushing, but only half intelligible. Miss Abbot joined in—\n“And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses\nReed and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up\nwith them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have\nnone: it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself\nagreeable to them.”\n“What we tell you is for your good,” added Bessie, in no harsh voice,\n“you should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would\nhave a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, Missis will\nsend you away, I am sure.”\n“Besides,” said Miss Abbot, “God will punish her: He might strike her\ndead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come,\nBessie, we will leave her: I wouldn’t have her heart for anything. Say\nyour prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don’t\nrepent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and\nfetch you away.”\nThey went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them.\nThe red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say\nnever, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead\nHall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it\ncontained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the\nmansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with\ncurtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre;\nthe two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half\nshrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red;\nthe table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the\nwalls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe,\nthe toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out\nof these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the\npiled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy\nMarseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned\neasy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool\nbefore it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.\nThis room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent,\nbecause remote from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was\nknown to be so seldom entered. The house-maid alone came here on\nSaturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week’s quiet\ndust: and Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the\ncontents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored\ndivers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased\nhusband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room—the\nspell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.\nMr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed\nhis last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the\nundertaker’s men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration\nhad guarded it from frequent intrusion.\nMy seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted,\nwas a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before\nme; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued,\nbroken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the\nmuffled windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant\nmajesty of the bed and room. I was not quite sure whether they had\nlocked the door; and when I dared move, I got up and went to see. Alas!\nyes: no jail was ever more secure. Returning, I had to cross before the\nlooking-glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it\nrevealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in\nreality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white\nface and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving\nwhere all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it\nlike one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie’s evening\nstories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and\nappearing before the eyes of belated travellers. I returned to my\nstool.\nSuperstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour\nfor complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted\nslave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a\nrapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal\npresent.\nAll John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference,\nall his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in\nmy disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I\nalways suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever\ncondemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win\nany one’s favour? Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected.\nGeorgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and\ninsolent carriage, was universally indulged. Her beauty, her pink\ncheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at\nher, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted,\nmuch less punished; though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed\nthe little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse\nvines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the\nconservatory: he called his mother “old girl,” too; sometimes reviled\nher for her dark skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her\nwishes; not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was\nstill “her own darling.” I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfil\nevery duty; and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking,\nfrom morning to noon, and from noon to night.\nMy head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no\none had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had\nturned against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded\nwith general opprobrium.\n“Unjust!—unjust!” said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into\nprecocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up,\ninstigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable\noppression—as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never\neating or drinking more, and letting myself die.\nWhat a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How all my\nbrain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what\ndarkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought! I could\nnot answer the ceaseless inward question—_why_ I thus suffered; now, at\nthe distance of—I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.\nI was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had\nnothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen\nvassalage. If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them.\nThey were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not\nsympathise with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to\nthem in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing,\nincapable of serving their interest, or adding to their pleasure; a\nnoxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment,\nof contempt of their judgment. I know that had I been a sanguine,\nbrilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child—though equally\ndependent and friendless—Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence more\ncomplacently; her children would have entertained for me more of the\ncordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone\nto make me the scapegoat of the nursery.\nDaylight began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o’clock, and\nthe beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heard the rain\nstill beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind\nhowling in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a\nstone, and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation,\nself-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying\nire. All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so; what thought had\nI been but just conceiving of starving myself to death? That certainly\nwas a crime: and was I fit to die? Or was the vault under the chancel\nof Gateshead Church an inviting bourne? In such vault I had been told\ndid Mr. Reed lie buried; and led by this thought to recall his idea, I\ndwelt on it with gathering dread. I could not remember him; but I knew\nthat he was my own uncle—my mother’s brother—that he had taken me when\na parentless infant to his house; and that in his last moments he had\nrequired a promise of Mrs. Reed that she would rear and maintain me as\none of her own children. Mrs. Reed probably considered she had kept\nthis promise; and so she had, I dare say, as well as her nature would\npermit her; but how could she really like an interloper not of her\nrace, and unconnected with her, after her husband’s death, by any tie?\nIt must have been most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung\npledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could\nnot love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her\nown family group.\nA singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not—never doubted—that if\nMr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I\nsat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls—occasionally also\nturning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaming mirror—I began to\nrecall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the\nviolation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the\nperjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed’s spirit,\nharassed by the wrongs of his sister’s child, might quit its\nabode—whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the\ndeparted—and rise before me in this chamber. I wiped my tears and\nhushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a\npreternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed\nface, bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in\ntheory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I\nendeavoured to stifle it—I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from\nmy eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room;\nat this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a\nray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight\nwas still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling\nand quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this\nstreak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried\nby some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for\nhorror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift\ndarting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My\nheart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I\ndeemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed,\nsuffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the\nlock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage;\nthe key turned, Bessie and Abbot entered.\n“Miss Eyre, are you ill?” said Bessie.\n“What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me!” exclaimed Abbot.\n“Take me out! Let me go into the nursery!” was my cry.\n“What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?” again demanded\nBessie.\n“Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come.” I had now got\nhold of Bessie’s hand, and she did not snatch it from me.\n“She has screamed out on purpose,” declared Abbot, in some disgust.\n“And what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have\nexcused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know her\nnaughty tricks.”\n“What is all this?” demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Reed\ncame along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling\nstormily. “Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre\nshould be left in the red-room till I came to her myself.”\n“Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma’am,” pleaded Bessie.\n“Let her go,” was the only answer. “Loose Bessie’s hand, child: you\ncannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I abhor\nartifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that\ntricks will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer, and it\nis only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall\nliberate you then.”\n“O aunt! have pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it—let me be punished\nsome other way! I shall be killed if—”\n“Silence! This violence is all most repulsive:” and so, no doubt, she\nfelt it. I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked\non me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous\nduplicity.\nBessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Reed, impatient of my now\nfrantic anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me\nin, without farther parley. I heard her sweeping away; and soon after\nshe was gone, I suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed\nthe scene.\n', 'The next thing I remember is, waking up with a feeling as if I had had\na frightful nightmare, and seeing before me a terrible red glare,\ncrossed with thick black bars. I heard voices, too, speaking with a\nhollow sound, and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water: agitation,\nuncertainty, and an all-predominating sense of terror confused my\nfaculties. Ere long, I became aware that some one was handling me;\nlifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture, and that more\ntenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before. I rested my head\nagainst a pillow or an arm, and felt easy.\nIn five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved: I knew quite\nwell that I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery\nfire. It was night: a candle burnt on the table; Bessie stood at the\nbed-foot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near\nmy pillow, leaning over me.\nI felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and\nsecurity, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an\nindividual not belonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Reed.\nTurning from Bessie (though her presence was far less obnoxious to me\nthan that of Abbot, for instance, would have been), I scrutinised the\nface of the gentleman: I knew him; it was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary,\nsometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing: for\nherself and the children she employed a physician.\n“Well, who am I?” he asked.\nI pronounced his name, offering him at the same time my hand: he took\nit, smiling and saying, “We shall do very well by-and-by.” Then he laid\nme down, and addressing Bessie, charged her to be very careful that I\nwas not disturbed during the night. Having given some further\ndirections, and intimated that he should call again the next day, he\ndeparted; to my grief: I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat\nin the chair near my pillow; and as he closed the door after him, all\nthe room darkened and my heart again sank: inexpressible sadness\nweighed it down.\n“Do you feel as if you should sleep, Miss?” asked Bessie, rather\nsoftly.\nScarcely dared I answer her; for I feared the next sentence might be\nrough. “I will try.”\n“Would you like to drink, or could you eat anything?”\n“No, thank you, Bessie.”\n“Then I think I shall go to bed, for it is past twelve o’clock; but you\nmay call me if you want anything in the night.”\nWonderful civility this! It emboldened me to ask a question.\n“Bessie, what is the matter with me? Am I ill?”\n“You fell sick, I suppose, in the red-room with crying; you’ll be\nbetter soon, no doubt.”\nBessie went into the housemaid’s apartment, which was near. I heard her\nsay—\n“Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery; I daren’t for my life be\nalone with that poor child to-night: she might die; it’s such a strange\nthing she should have that fit: I wonder if she saw anything. Missis\nwas rather too hard.”\nSarah came back with her; they both went to bed; they were whispering\ntogether for half-an-hour before they fell asleep. I caught scraps of\ntheir conversation, from which I was able only too distinctly to infer\nthe main subject discussed.\n“Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished”—“A great\nblack dog behind him”—“Three loud raps on the chamber door”—“A light in\nthe churchyard just over his grave,” &c., &c.\nAt last both slept: the fire and the candle went out. For me, the\nwatches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; ear, eye, and\nmind were alike strained by dread: such dread as children only can\nfeel.\nNo severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the\nred-room; it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the\nreverberation to this day. Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some fearful\npangs of mental suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for you knew not\nwhat you did: while rending my heart-strings, you thought you were only\nuprooting my bad propensities.\nNext day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by\nthe nursery hearth. I felt physically weak and broken down: but my\nworse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness\nwhich kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt\ndrop from my cheek than another followed. Yet, I thought, I ought to\nhave been happy, for none of the Reeds were there, they were all gone\nout in the carriage with their mama. Abbot, too, was sewing in another\nroom, and Bessie, as she moved hither and thither, putting away toys\nand arranging drawers, addressed to me every now and then a word of\nunwonted kindness. This state of things should have been to me a\nparadise of peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand\nand thankless fagging; but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such\na state that no calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them\nagreeably.\nBessie had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a\ntart on a certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird of paradise,\nnestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, had been wont to stir\nin me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had\noften petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine\nit more closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a\nprivilege. This precious vessel was now placed on my knee, and I was\ncordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate pastry upon it. Vain\nfavour! coming, like most other favours long deferred and often wished\nfor, too late! I could not eat the tart; and the plumage of the bird,\nthe tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded: I put both plate and\ntart away. Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word _book_ acted\nas a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels\nfrom the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight.\nI considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of\ninterest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves,\nhaving sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under\nmushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at\nlength made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of\nEngland to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker,\nand the population more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being,\nin my creed, solid parts of the earth’s surface, I doubted not that I\nmight one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little\nfields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep,\nand birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty\nmastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other.\nYet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I turned\nover its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had,\ntill now, never failed to find—all was eerie and dreary; the giants\nwere gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a\nmost desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed\nthe book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table,\nbeside the untasted tart.\nBessie had now finished dusting and tidying the room, and having washed\nher hands, she opened a certain little drawer, full of splendid shreds\nof silk and satin, and began making a new bonnet for Georgiana’s doll.\nMeantime she sang: her song was—\n“In the days when we went gipsying,\n    A long time ago.”\nI had often heard the song before, and always with lively delight; for\nBessie had a sweet voice,—at least, I thought so. But now, though her\nvoice was still sweet, I found in its melody an indescribable sadness.\nSometimes, preoccupied with her work, she sang the refrain very low,\nvery lingeringly; “A long time ago” came out like the saddest cadence\nof a funeral hymn. She passed into another ballad, this time a really\ndoleful one.\n“My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary;\n    Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;\nSoon will the twilight close moonless and dreary\n    Over the path of the poor orphan child.\nWhy did they send me so far and so lonely,\n    Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled?\nMen are hard-hearted, and kind angels only\n    Watch o’er the steps of a poor orphan child.\nYet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing,\n    Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild,\nGod, in His mercy, protection is showing,\n    Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.\nEv’n should I fall o’er the broken bridge passing,\n    Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,\nStill will my Father, with promise and blessing,\n    Take to His bosom the poor orphan child.\nThere is a thought that for strength should avail me,\n    Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled;\nHeaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me;\n    God is a friend to the poor orphan child.”\n“Come, Miss Jane, don’t cry,” said Bessie as she finished. She might as\nwell have said to the fire, “don’t burn!” but how could she divine the\nmorbid suffering to which I was a prey? In the course of the morning\nMr. Lloyd came again.\n“What, already up!” said he, as he entered the nursery. “Well, nurse,\nhow is she?”\nBessie answered that I was doing very well.\n“Then she ought to look more cheerful. Come here, Miss Jane: your name\nis Jane, is it not?”\n“Yes, sir, Jane Eyre.”\n“Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane Eyre; can you tell me what\nabout? Have you any pain?”\n“No, sir.”\n“Oh! I daresay she is crying because she could not go out with Missis\nin the carriage,” interposed Bessie.\n“Surely not! why, she is too old for such pettishness.”\nI thought so too; and my self-esteem being wounded by the false charge,\nI answered promptly, “I never cried for such a thing in my life: I hate\ngoing out in the carriage. I cry because I am miserable.”\n“Oh fie, Miss!” said Bessie.\nThe good apothecary appeared a little puzzled. I was standing before\nhim; he fixed his eyes on me very steadily: his eyes were small and\ngrey; not very bright, but I dare say I should think them shrewd now:\nhe had a hard-featured yet good-natured looking face. Having considered\nme at leisure, he said—\n“What made you ill yesterday?”\n“She had a fall,” said Bessie, again putting in her word.\n“Fall! why, that is like a baby again! Can’t she manage to walk at her\nage? She must be eight or nine years old.”\n“I was knocked down,” was the blunt explanation, jerked out of me by\nanother pang of mortified pride; “but that did not make me ill,” I\nadded; while Mr. Lloyd helped himself to a pinch of snuff.\nAs he was returning the box to his waistcoat pocket, a loud bell rang\nfor the servants’ dinner; he knew what it was. “That’s for you, nurse,”\nsaid he; “you can go down; I’ll give Miss Jane a lecture till you come\nback.”\nBessie would rather have stayed, but she was obliged to go, because\npunctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall.\n“The fall did not make you ill; what did, then?” pursued Mr. Lloyd when\nBessie was gone.\n“I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark.”\nI saw Mr. Lloyd smile and frown at the same time.\n“Ghost! What, you are a baby after all! You are afraid of ghosts?”\n“Of Mr. Reed’s ghost I am: he died in that room, and was laid out\nthere. Neither Bessie nor any one else will go into it at night, if\nthey can help it; and it was cruel to shut me up alone without a\ncandle,—so cruel that I think I shall never forget it.”\n“Nonsense! And is it that makes you so miserable? Are you afraid now in\ndaylight?”\n“No: but night will come again before long: and besides,—I am\nunhappy,—very unhappy, for other things.”\n“What other things? Can you tell me some of them?”\nHow much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult it was\nto frame any answer! Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their\nfeelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they\nknow not how to express the result of the process in words. Fearful,\nhowever, of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving my\ngrief by imparting it, I, after a disturbed pause, contrived to frame a\nmeagre, though, as far as it went, true response.\n“For one thing, I have no father or mother, brothers or sisters.”\n“You have a kind aunt and cousins.”\nAgain I paused; then bunglingly enounced—\n“But John Reed knocked me down, and my aunt shut me up in the\nred-room.”\nMr. Lloyd a second time produced his snuff-box.\n“Don’t you think Gateshead Hall a very beautiful house?” asked he. “Are\nyou not very thankful to have such a fine place to live at?”\n“It is not my house, sir; and Abbot says I have less right to be here\nthan a servant.”\n“Pooh! you can’t be silly enough to wish to leave such a splendid\nplace?”\n“If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it; but I can\nnever get away from Gateshead till I am a woman.”\n“Perhaps you may—who knows? Have you any relations besides Mrs. Reed?”\n“I think not, sir.”\n“None belonging to your father?”\n“I don’t know: I asked Aunt Reed once, and she said possibly I might\nhave some poor, low relations called Eyre, but she knew nothing about\nthem.”\n“If you had such, would you like to go to them?”\nI reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to\nchildren: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable\npoverty; they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes,\nscanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty\nfor me was synonymous with degradation.\n“No; I should not like to belong to poor people,” was my reply.\n“Not even if they were kind to you?”\nI shook my head: I could not see how poor people had the means of being\nkind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to\nbe uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes\nnursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of\nthe village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase\nliberty at the price of caste.\n“But are your relatives so very poor? Are they working people?”\n“I cannot tell; Aunt Reed says if I have any, they must be a beggarly\nset: I should not like to go a begging.”\n“Would you like to go to school?”\nAgain I reflected: I scarcely knew what school was: Bessie sometimes\nspoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks, wore\nbackboards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and precise:\nJohn Reed hated his school, and abused his master; but John Reed’s\ntastes were no rule for mine, and if Bessie’s accounts of\nschool-discipline (gathered from the young ladies of a family where she\nhad lived before coming to Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, her\ndetails of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies\nwere, I thought, equally attractive. She boasted of beautiful paintings\nof landscapes and flowers by them executed; of songs they could sing\nand pieces they could play, of purses they could net, of French books\nthey could translate; till my spirit was moved to emulation as I\nlistened. Besides, school would be a complete change: it implied a long\njourney, an entire separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new\nlife.\n“I should indeed like to go to school,” was the audible conclusion of\nmy musings.\n“Well, well! who knows what may happen?” said Mr. Lloyd, as he got up.\n“The child ought to have change of air and scene,” he added, speaking\nto himself; “nerves not in a good state.”\nBessie now returned; at the same moment the carriage was heard rolling\nup the gravel-walk.\n“Is that your mistress, nurse?” asked Mr. Lloyd. “I should like to\nspeak to her before I go.”\nBessie invited him to walk into the breakfast-room, and led the way\nout. In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Reed, I\npresume, from after-occurrences, that the apothecary ventured to\nrecommend my being sent to school; and the recommendation was no doubt\nreadily enough adopted; for as Abbot said, in discussing the subject\nwith Bessie when both sat sewing in the nursery one night, after I was\nin bed, and, as they thought, asleep, “Missis was, she dared say, glad\nenough to get rid of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child, who always\nlooked as if she were watching everybody, and scheming plots\nunderhand.” Abbot, I think, gave me credit for being a sort of\ninfantine Guy Fawkes.\nOn that same occasion I learned, for the first time, from Miss Abbot’s\ncommunications to Bessie, that my father had been a poor clergyman;\nthat my mother had married him against the wishes of her friends, who\nconsidered the match beneath her; that my grandfather Reed was so\nirritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without a shilling; that\nafter my mother and father had been married a year, the latter caught\nthe typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing\ntown where his curacy was situated, and where that disease was then\nprevalent: that my mother took the infection from him, and both died\nwithin a month of each other.\nBessie, when she heard this narrative, sighed and said, “Poor Miss Jane\nis to be pitied, too, Abbot.”\n“Yes,” responded Abbot; “if she were a nice, pretty child, one might\ncompassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a\nlittle toad as that.”\n“Not a great deal, to be sure,” agreed Bessie: “at any rate, a beauty\nlike Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition.”\n“Yes, I doat on Miss Georgiana!” cried the fervent Abbot. “Little\ndarling!—with her long curls and her blue eyes, and such a sweet colour\nas she has; just as if she were painted!—Bessie, I could fancy a Welsh\nrabbit for supper.”\n“So could I—with a roast onion. Come, we’ll go down.” They went.\n', 'From my discourse with Mr. Lloyd, and from the above reported\nconference between Bessie and Abbot, I gathered enough of hope to\nsuffice as a motive for wishing to get well: a change seemed near,—I\ndesired and waited it in silence. It tarried, however: days and weeks\npassed: I had regained my normal state of health, but no new allusion\nwas made to the subject over which I brooded. Mrs. Reed surveyed me at\ntimes with a severe eye, but seldom addressed me: since my illness, she\nhad drawn a more marked line of separation than ever between me and her\nown children; appointing me a small closet to sleep in by myself,\ncondemning me to take my meals alone, and pass all my time in the\nnursery, while my cousins were constantly in the drawing-room. Not a\nhint, however, did she drop about sending me to school: still I felt an\ninstinctive certainty that she would not long endure me under the same\nroof with her; for her glance, now more than ever, when turned on me,\nexpressed an insuperable and rooted aversion.\nEliza and Georgiana, evidently acting according to orders, spoke to me\nas little as possible: John thrust his tongue in his cheek whenever he\nsaw me, and once attempted chastisement; but as I instantly turned\nagainst him, roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate\nrevolt which had stirred my corruption before, he thought it better to\ndesist, and ran from me uttering execrations, and vowing I had burst\nhis nose. I had indeed levelled at that prominent feature as hard a\nblow as my knuckles could inflict; and when I saw that either that or\nmy look daunted him, I had the greatest inclination to follow up my\nadvantage to purpose; but he was already with his mama. I heard him in\na blubbering tone commence the tale of how “that nasty Jane Eyre” had\nflown at him like a mad cat: he was stopped rather harshly—\n“Don’t talk to me about her, John: I told you not to go near her; she\nis not worthy of notice; I do not choose that either you or your\nsisters should associate with her.”\nHere, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, and without at\nall deliberating on my words—\n“They are not fit to associate with me.”\nMrs. Reed was rather a stout woman; but, on hearing this strange and\naudacious declaration, she ran nimbly up the stair, swept me like a\nwhirlwind into the nursery, and crushing me down on the edge of my\ncrib, dared me in an emphatic voice to rise from that place, or utter\none syllable during the remainder of the day.\n“What would Uncle Reed say to you, if he were alive?” was my scarcely\nvoluntary demand. I say scarcely voluntary, for it seemed as if my\ntongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance:\nsomething spoke out of me over which I had no control.\n“What?” said Mrs. Reed under her breath: her usually cold composed grey\neye became troubled with a look like fear; she took her hand from my\narm, and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether I were child\nor fiend. I was now in for it.\n“My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so\ncan papa and mama: they know how you shut me up all day long, and how\nyou wish me dead.”\nMrs. Reed soon rallied her spirits: she shook me most soundly, she\nboxed both my ears, and then left me without a word. Bessie supplied\nthe hiatus by a homily of an hour’s length, in which she proved beyond\na doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared\nunder a roof. I half believed her; for I felt indeed only bad feelings\nsurging in my breast.\nNovember, December, and half of January passed away. Christmas and the\nNew Year had been celebrated at Gateshead with the usual festive cheer;\npresents had been interchanged, dinners and evening parties given. From\nevery enjoyment I was, of course, excluded: my share of the gaiety\nconsisted in witnessing the daily apparelling of Eliza and Georgiana,\nand seeing them descend to the drawing-room, dressed out in thin muslin\nfrocks and scarlet sashes, with hair elaborately ringletted; and\nafterwards, in listening to the sound of the piano or the harp played\nbelow, to the passing to and fro of the butler and footman, to the\njingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed, to the broken\nhum of conversation as the drawing-room door opened and closed. When\ntired of this occupation, I would retire from the stairhead to the\nsolitary and silent nursery: there, though somewhat sad, I was not\nmiserable. To speak truth, I had not the least wish to go into company,\nfor in company I was very rarely noticed; and if Bessie had but been\nkind and companionable, I should have deemed it a treat to spend the\nevenings quietly with her, instead of passing them under the formidable\neye of Mrs. Reed, in a room full of ladies and gentlemen. But Bessie,\nas soon as she had dressed her young ladies, used to take herself off\nto the lively regions of the kitchen and housekeeper’s room, generally\nbearing the candle along with her. I then sat with my doll on my knee\ntill the fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make sure that\nnothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room; and when the embers\nsank to a dull red, I undressed hastily, tugging at knots and strings\nas I best might, and sought shelter from cold and darkness in my crib.\nTo this crib I always took my doll; human beings must love something,\nand, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to\nfind a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby\nas a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what\nabsurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive\nand capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my\nnight-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively\nhappy, believing it to be happy likewise.\nLong did the hours seem while I waited the departure of the company,\nand listened for the sound of Bessie’s step on the stairs: sometimes\nshe would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or her scissors,\nor perhaps to bring me something by way of supper—a bun or a\ncheese-cake—then she would sit on the bed while I ate it, and when I\nhad finished, she would tuck the clothes round me, and twice she kissed\nme, and said, “Good night, Miss Jane.” When thus gentle, Bessie seemed\nto me the best, prettiest, kindest being in the world; and I wished\nmost intensely that she would always be so pleasant and amiable, and\nnever push me about, or scold, or task me unreasonably, as she was too\noften wont to do. Bessie Lee must, I think, have been a girl of good\nnatural capacity, for she was smart in all she did, and had a\nremarkable knack of narrative; so, at least, I judge from the\nimpression made on me by her nursery tales. She was pretty too, if my\nrecollections of her face and person are correct. I remember her as a\nslim young woman, with black hair, dark eyes, very nice features, and\ngood, clear complexion; but she had a capricious and hasty temper, and\nindifferent ideas of principle or justice: still, such as she was, I\npreferred her to any one else at Gateshead Hall.\nIt was the fifteenth of January, about nine o’clock in the morning:\nBessie was gone down to breakfast; my cousins had not yet been summoned\nto their mama; Eliza was putting on her bonnet and warm garden-coat to\ngo and feed her poultry, an occupation of which she was fond: and not\nless so of selling the eggs to the housekeeper and hoarding up the\nmoney she thus obtained. She had a turn for traffic, and a marked\npropensity for saving; shown not only in the vending of eggs and\nchickens, but also in driving hard bargains with the gardener about\nflower-roots, seeds, and slips of plants; that functionary having\norders from Mrs. Reed to buy of his young lady all the products of her\nparterre she wished to sell: and Eliza would have sold the hair off her\nhead if she could have made a handsome profit thereby. As to her money,\nshe first secreted it in odd corners, wrapped in a rag or an old\ncurl-paper; but some of these hoards having been discovered by the\nhousemaid, Eliza, fearful of one day losing her valued treasure,\nconsented to intrust it to her mother, at a usurious rate of\ninterest—fifty or sixty per cent.; which interest she exacted every\nquarter, keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy.\nGeorgiana sat on a high stool, dressing her hair at the glass, and\ninterweaving her curls with artificial flowers and faded feathers, of\nwhich she had found a store in a drawer in the attic. I was making my\nbed, having received strict orders from Bessie to get it arranged\nbefore she returned (for Bessie now frequently employed me as a sort of\nunder-nurserymaid, to tidy the room, dust the chairs, &c.). Having\nspread the quilt and folded my night-dress, I went to the window-seat\nto put in order some picture-books and doll’s house furniture scattered\nthere; an abrupt command from Georgiana to let her playthings alone\n(for the tiny chairs and mirrors, the fairy plates and cups, were her\nproperty) stopped my proceedings; and then, for lack of other\noccupation, I fell to breathing on the frost-flowers with which the\nwindow was fretted, and thus clearing a space in the glass through\nwhich I might look out on the grounds, where all was still and\npetrified under the influence of a hard frost.\nFrom this window were visible the porter’s lodge and the carriage-road,\nand just as I had dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage veiling\nthe panes as left room to look out, I saw the gates thrown open and a\ncarriage roll through. I watched it ascending the drive with\nindifference; carriages often came to Gateshead, but none ever brought\nvisitors in whom I was interested; it stopped in front of the house,\nthe door-bell rang loudly, the new-comer was admitted. All this being\nnothing to me, my vacant attention soon found livelier attraction in\nthe spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and chirruped on the\ntwigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the\ncasement. The remains of my breakfast of bread and milk stood on the\ntable, and having crumbled a morsel of roll, I was tugging at the sash\nto put out the crumbs on the window-sill, when Bessie came running\nupstairs into the nursery.\n“Miss Jane, take off your pinafore; what are you doing there? Have you\nwashed your hands and face this morning?” I gave another tug before I\nanswered, for I wanted the bird to be secure of its bread: the sash\nyielded; I scattered the crumbs, some on the stone sill, some on the\ncherry-tree bough, then, closing the window, I replied—\n“No, Bessie; I have only just finished dusting.”\n“Troublesome, careless child! and what are you doing now? You look\nquite red, as if you had been about some mischief: what were you\nopening the window for?”\nI was spared the trouble of answering, for Bessie seemed in too great a\nhurry to listen to explanations; she hauled me to the washstand,\ninflicted a merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face and hands\nwith soap, water, and a coarse towel; disciplined my head with a\nbristly brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying me to the\ntop of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted in the\nbreakfast-room.\nI would have asked who wanted me: I would have demanded if Mrs. Reed\nwas there; but Bessie was already gone, and had closed the nursery-door\nupon me. I slowly descended. For nearly three months, I had never been\ncalled to Mrs. Reed’s presence; restricted so long to the nursery, the\nbreakfast, dining, and drawing-rooms were become for me awful regions,\non which it dismayed me to intrude.\nI now stood in the empty hall; before me was the breakfast-room door,\nand I stopped, intimidated and trembling. What a miserable little\npoltroon had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those\ndays! I feared to return to the nursery, and feared to go forward to\nthe parlour; ten minutes I stood in agitated hesitation; the vehement\nringing of the breakfast-room bell decided me; I _must_ enter.\n“Who could want me?” I asked inwardly, as with both hands I turned the\nstiff door-handle, which, for a second or two, resisted my efforts.\n“What should I see besides Aunt Reed in the apartment?—a man or a\nwoman?” The handle turned, the door unclosed, and passing through and\ncurtseying low, I looked up at—a black pillar!—such, at least, appeared\nto me, at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing\nerect on the rug: the grim face at the top was like a carved mask,\nplaced above the shaft by way of capital.\nMrs. Reed occupied her usual seat by the fireside; she made a signal to\nme to approach; I did so, and she introduced me to the stony stranger\nwith the words: “This is the little girl respecting whom I applied to\nyou.”\n_He_, for it was a man, turned his head slowly towards where I stood,\nand having examined me with the two inquisitive-looking grey eyes which\ntwinkled under a pair of bushy brows, said solemnly, and in a bass\nvoice, “Her size is small: what is her age?”\n“Ten years.”\n“So much?” was the doubtful answer; and he prolonged his scrutiny for\nsome minutes. Presently he addressed me—“Your name, little girl?”\n“Jane Eyre, sir.”\nIn uttering these words I looked up: he seemed to me a tall gentleman;\nbut then I was very little; his features were large, and they and all\nthe lines of his frame were equally harsh and prim.\n“Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good child?”\nImpossible to reply to this in the affirmative: my little world held a\ncontrary opinion: I was silent. Mrs. Reed answered for me by an\nexpressive shake of the head, adding soon, “Perhaps the less said on\nthat subject the better, Mr. Brocklehurst.”\n“Sorry indeed to hear it! she and I must have some talk;” and bending\nfrom the perpendicular, he installed his person in the arm-chair\nopposite Mrs. Reed’s. “Come here,” he said.\nI stepped across the rug; he placed me square and straight before him.\nWhat a face he had, now that it was almost on a level with mine! what a\ngreat nose! and what a mouth! and what large prominent teeth!\n“No sight so sad as that of a naughty child,” he began, “especially a\nnaughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?”\n“They go to hell,” was my ready and orthodox answer.\n“And what is hell? Can you tell me that?”\n“A pit full of fire.”\n“And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for\never?”\n“No, sir.”\n“What must you do to avoid it?”\nI deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable:\n“I must keep in good health, and not die.”\n“How can you keep in good health? Children younger than you die daily.\nI buried a little child of five years old only a day or two since,—a\ngood little child, whose soul is now in heaven. It is to be feared the\nsame could not be said of you were you to be called hence.”\nNot being in a condition to remove his doubt, I only cast my eyes down\non the two large feet planted on the rug, and sighed, wishing myself\nfar enough away.\n“I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent of ever having\nbeen the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress.”\n“Benefactress! benefactress!” said I inwardly: “they all call Mrs. Reed\nmy benefactress; if so, a benefactress is a disagreeable thing.”\n“Do you say your prayers night and morning?” continued my interrogator.\n“Yes, sir.”\n“Do you read your Bible?”\n“Sometimes.”\n“With pleasure? Are you fond of it?”\n“I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel,\nand a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and\nJob and Jonah.”\n“And the Psalms? I hope you like them?”\n“No, sir.”\n“No? oh, shocking! I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six\nPsalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather have, a\ngingerbread-nut to eat or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: ‘Oh!\nthe verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms;’ says he, ‘I wish to be a\nlittle angel here below;’ he then gets two nuts in recompense for his\ninfant piety.”\n“Psalms are not interesting,” I remarked.\n“That proves you have a wicked heart; and you must pray to God to\nchange it: to give you a new and clean one: to take away your heart of\nstone and give you a heart of flesh.”\nI was about to propound a question, touching the manner in which that\noperation of changing my heart was to be performed, when Mrs. Reed\ninterposed, telling me to sit down; she then proceeded to carry on the\nconversation herself.\n“Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote to\nyou three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the character\nand disposition I could wish: should you admit her into Lowood school,\nI should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to\nkeep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard against her worst\nfault, a tendency to deceit. I mention this in your hearing, Jane, that\nyou may not attempt to impose on Mr. Brocklehurst.”\nWell might I dread, well might I dislike Mrs. Reed; for it was her\nnature to wound me cruelly; never was I happy in her presence; however\ncarefully I obeyed, however strenuously I strove to please her, my\nefforts were still repulsed and repaid by such sentences as the above.\nNow, uttered before a stranger, the accusation cut me to the heart; I\ndimly perceived that she was already obliterating hope from the new\nphase of existence which she destined me to enter; I felt, though I\ncould not have expressed the feeling, that she was sowing aversion and\nunkindness along my future path; I saw myself transformed under Mr.\nBrocklehurst’s eye into an artful, noxious child, and what could I do\nto remedy the injury?\n“Nothing, indeed,” thought I, as I struggled to repress a sob, and\nhastily wiped away some tears, the impotent evidences of my anguish.\n“Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a child,” said Mr. Brocklehurst; “it\nis akin to falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in the lake\nburning with fire and brimstone; she shall, however, be watched, Mrs.\nReed. I will speak to Miss Temple and the teachers.”\n“I should wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects,”\ncontinued my benefactress; “to be made useful, to be kept humble: as\nfor the vacations, she will, with your permission, spend them always at\nLowood.”\n“Your decisions are perfectly judicious, madam,” returned Mr.\nBrocklehurst. “Humility is a Christian grace, and one peculiarly\nappropriate to the pupils of Lowood; I, therefore, direct that especial\ncare shall be bestowed on its cultivation amongst them. I have studied\nhow best to mortify in them the worldly sentiment of pride; and, only\nthe other day, I had a pleasing proof of my success. My second\ndaughter, Augusta, went with her mama to visit the school, and on her\nreturn she exclaimed: ‘Oh, dear papa, how quiet and plain all the girls\nat Lowood look, with their hair combed behind their ears, and their\nlong pinafores, and those little holland pockets outside their\nfrocks—they are almost like poor people’s children! and,’ said she,\n‘they looked at my dress and mama’s, as if they had never seen a silk\ngown before.’”\n“This is the state of things I quite approve,” returned Mrs. Reed; “had\nI sought all England over, I could scarcely have found a system more\nexactly fitting a child like Jane Eyre. Consistency, my dear Mr.\nBrocklehurst; I advocate consistency in all things.”\n“Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties; and it has been\nobserved in every arrangement connected with the establishment of\nLowood: plain fare, simple attire, unsophisticated accommodations,\nhardy and active habits; such is the order of the day in the house and\nits inhabitants.”\n“Quite right, sir. I may then depend upon this child being received as\na pupil at Lowood, and there being trained in conformity to her\nposition and prospects?”\n“Madam, you may: she shall be placed in that nursery of chosen plants,\nand I trust she will show herself grateful for the inestimable\nprivilege of her election.”\n“I will send her, then, as soon as possible, Mr. Brocklehurst; for, I\nassure you, I feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility that was\nbecoming too irksome.”\n“No doubt, no doubt, madam; and now I wish you good morning. I shall\nreturn to Brocklehurst Hall in the course of a week or two: my good\nfriend, the Archdeacon, will not permit me to leave him sooner. I shall\nsend Miss Temple notice that she is to expect a new girl, so that there\nwill be no difficulty about receiving her. Good-bye.”\n“Good-bye, Mr. Brocklehurst; remember me to Mrs. and Miss Brocklehurst,\nand to Augusta and Theodore, and Master Broughton Brocklehurst.”\n“I will, madam. Little girl, here is a book entitled the ‘Child’s\nGuide’; read it with prayer, especially that part containing ‘An\naccount of the awfully sudden death of Martha G——, a naughty child\naddicted to falsehood and deceit.’”\nWith these words Mr. Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn\nin a cover, and having rung for his carriage, he departed.\nMrs. Reed and I were left alone: some minutes passed in silence; she\nwas sewing, I was watching her. Mrs. Reed might be at that time some\nsix or seven and thirty; she was a woman of robust frame,\nsquare-shouldered and strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not\nobese: she had a somewhat large face, the under jaw being much\ndeveloped and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and\nprominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light\neyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth; her skin was dark and opaque,\nher hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a bell—illness\nnever came near her; she was an exact, clever manager; her household\nand tenantry were thoroughly under her control; her children only at\ntimes defied her authority and laughed it to scorn; she dressed well,\nand had a presence and port calculated to set off handsome attire.\nSitting on a low stool, a few yards from her arm-chair, I examined her\nfigure; I perused her features. In my hand I held the tract containing\nthe sudden death of the Liar, to which narrative my attention had been\npointed as to an appropriate warning. What had just passed; what Mrs.\nReed had said concerning me to Mr. Brocklehurst; the whole tenor of\ntheir conversation, was recent, raw, and stinging in my mind; I had\nfelt every word as acutely as I had heard it plainly, and a passion of\nresentment fomented now within me.\nMrs. Reed looked up from her work; her eye settled on mine, her fingers\nat the same time suspended their nimble movements.\n“Go out of the room; return to the nursery,” was her mandate. My look\nor something else must have struck her as offensive, for she spoke with\nextreme though suppressed irritation. I got up, I went to the door; I\ncame back again; I walked to the window, across the room, then close up\nto her.\n_Speak_ I must: I had been trodden on severely, and _must_ turn: but\nhow? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I\ngathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence—\n“I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved _you;_ but I\ndeclare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the\nworld except John Reed; and this book about the liar, you may give to\nyour girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I.”\nMrs. Reed’s hands still lay on her work inactive: her eye of ice\ncontinued to dwell freezingly on mine.\n“What more have you to say?” she asked, rather in the tone in which a\nperson might address an opponent of adult age than such as is\nordinarily used to a child.\nThat eye of hers, that voice stirred every antipathy I had. Shaking\nfrom head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, I continued—\n“I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt\nagain as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown\nup; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I\nwill say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me\nwith miserable cruelty.”\n“How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?”\n“How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the _truth_. You\nthink I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or\nkindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember\nhow you thrust me back—roughly and violently thrust me back—into the\nred-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in\nagony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, ‘Have\nmercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!’ And that punishment you made me suffer\nbecause your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down for nothing. I will\ntell anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale. People think you a\ngood woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. _You_ are deceitful!”\nHow dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth\nEre I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, with\nthe strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as\nif an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into\nunhoped-for liberty. Not without cause was this sentiment: Mrs. Reed\nlooked frightened; her work had slipped from her knee; she was lifting\nup her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even twisting her face as\nif she would cry.\n“Jane, you are under a mistake: what is the matter with you? Why do you\ntremble so violently? Would you like to drink some water?”\n“No, Mrs. Reed.”\n“Is there anything else you wish for, Jane? I assure you, I desire to\nbe your friend.”\n“Not you. You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad character, a deceitful\ndisposition; and I’ll let everybody at Lowood know what you are, and\nwhat you have done.”\n“Jane, you don’t understand these things: children must be corrected\nfor their faults.”\n“Deceit is not my fault!” I cried out in a savage, high voice.\n“But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow: and now return to\nthe nursery—there’s a dear—and lie down a little.”\n“I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs.\nReed, for I hate to live here.”\n“I will indeed send her to school soon,” murmured Mrs. Reed _sotto\nvoce_; and gathering up her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment.\nI was left there alone—winner of the field. It was the hardest battle I\nhad fought, and the first victory I had gained: I stood awhile on the\nrug, where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed my conqueror’s\nsolitude. First, I smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce\npleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my\npulses. A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done; cannot\ngive its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine,\nwithout experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of\nreaction. A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would\nhave been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs.\nReed: the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead,\nwould have represented as meetly my subsequent condition, when\nhalf-an-hour’s silence and reflection had shown me the madness of my\nconduct, and the dreariness of my hated and hating position.\nSomething of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic\nwine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour,\nmetallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.\nWillingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed’s pardon; but I\nknew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way\nto make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every\nturbulent impulse of my nature.\nI would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking;\nfain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of\nsombre indignation. I took a book—some Arabian tales; I sat down and\nendeavoured to read. I could make no sense of the subject; my own\nthoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found\nfascinating. I opened the glass-door in the breakfast-room: the\nshrubbery was quite still: the black frost reigned, unbroken by sun or\nbreeze, through the grounds. I covered my head and arms with the skirt\nof my frock, and went out to walk in a part of the plantation which was\nquite sequestrated; but I found no pleasure in the silent trees, the\nfalling fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept\nby past winds in heaps, and now stiffened together. I leaned against a\ngate, and looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding, where\nthe short grass was nipped and blanched. It was a very grey day; a most\nopaque sky, “onding on snaw,” canopied all; thence flakes fell at\nintervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without\nmelting. I stood, a wretched child enough, whispering to myself over\nand over again, “What shall I do?—what shall I do?”\nAll at once I heard a clear voice call, “Miss Jane! where are you? Come\nto lunch!”\nIt was Bessie, I knew well enough; but I did not stir; her light step\ncame tripping down the path.\n“You naughty little thing!” she said. “Why don’t you come when you are\ncalled?”\nBessie’s presence, compared with the thoughts over which I had been\nbrooding, seemed cheerful; even though, as usual, she was somewhat\ncross. The fact is, after my conflict with and victory over Mrs. Reed,\nI was not disposed to care much for the nursemaid’s transitory anger;\nand I _was_ disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of heart. I just\nput my two arms round her and said, “Come, Bessie! don’t scold.”\nThe action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated to\nindulge in: somehow it pleased her.\n“You are a strange child, Miss Jane,” she said, as she looked down at\nme; “a little roving, solitary thing: and you are going to school, I\nsuppose?”\nI nodded.\n“And won’t you be sorry to leave poor Bessie?”\n“What does Bessie care for me? She is always scolding me.”\n“Because you’re such a queer, frightened, shy little thing. You should\nbe bolder.”\n“What! to get more knocks?”\n“Nonsense! But you are rather put upon, that’s certain. My mother said,\nwhen she came to see me last week, that she would not like a little one\nof her own to be in your place.—Now, come in, and I’ve some good news\nfor you.”\n“I don’t think you have, Bessie.”\n“Child! what do you mean? What sorrowful eyes you fix on me! Well, but\nMissis and the young ladies and Master John are going out to tea this\nafternoon, and you shall have tea with me. I’ll ask cook to bake you a\nlittle cake, and then you shall help me to look over your drawers; for\nI am soon to pack your trunk. Missis intends you to leave Gateshead in\na day or two, and you shall choose what toys you like to take with\nyou.”\n“Bessie, you must promise not to scold me any more till I go.”\n“Well, I will; but mind you are a very good girl, and don’t be afraid\nof me. Don’t start when I chance to speak rather sharply; it’s so\nprovoking.”\n“I don’t think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Bessie, because I\nhave got used to you, and I shall soon have another set of people to\ndread.”\n“If you dread them they’ll dislike you.”\n“As you do, Bessie?”\n“I don’t dislike you, Miss; I believe I am fonder of you than of all\nthe others.”\n“You don’t show it.”\n“You little sharp thing! you’ve got quite a new way of talking. What\nmakes you so venturesome and hardy?”\n“Why, I shall soon be away from you, and besides”—I was going to say\nsomething about what had passed between me and Mrs. Reed, but on second\nthoughts I considered it better to remain silent on that head.\n“And so you’re glad to leave me?”\n“Not at all, Bessie; indeed, just now I’m rather sorry.”\n“Just now! and rather! How coolly my little lady says it! I dare say\nnow if I were to ask you for a kiss you wouldn’t give it me: you’d say\nyou’d _rather_ not.”\n“I’ll kiss you and welcome: bend your head down.” Bessie stooped; we\nmutually embraced, and I followed her into the house quite comforted.\nThat afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony; and in the evening Bessie\ntold me some of her most enchanting stories, and sang me some of her\nsweetest songs. Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.\n', 'Five o’clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of January,\nwhen Bessie brought a candle into my closet and found me already up and\nnearly dressed. I had risen half-an-hour before her entrance, and had\nwashed my face, and put on my clothes by the light of a half-moon just\nsetting, whose rays streamed through the narrow window near my crib. I\nwas to leave Gateshead that day by a coach which passed the lodge gates\nat six A.M. Bessie was the only person yet risen; she had lit a fire in\nthe nursery, where she now proceeded to make my breakfast. Few children\ncan eat when excited with the thoughts of a journey; nor could I.\nBessie, having pressed me in vain to take a few spoonfuls of the boiled\nmilk and bread she had prepared for me, wrapped up some biscuits in a\npaper and put them into my bag; then she helped me on with my pelisse\nand bonnet, and wrapping herself in a shawl, she and I left the\nnursery. As we passed Mrs. Reed’s bedroom, she said, “Will you go in\nand bid Missis good-bye?”\n“No, Bessie: she came to my crib last night when you were gone down to\nsupper, and said I need not disturb her in the morning, or my cousins\neither; and she told me to remember that she had always been my best\nfriend, and to speak of her and be grateful to her accordingly.”\n“What did you say, Miss?”\n“Nothing: I covered my face with the bedclothes, and turned from her to\nthe wall.”\n“That was wrong, Miss Jane.”\n“It was quite right, Bessie. Your Missis has not been my friend: she\nhas been my foe.”\n“O Miss Jane! don’t say so!”\n“Good-bye to Gateshead!” cried I, as we passed through the hall and\nwent out at the front door.\nThe moon was set, and it was very dark; Bessie carried a lantern, whose\nlight glanced on wet steps and gravel road sodden by a recent thaw. Raw\nand chill was the winter morning: my teeth chattered as I hastened down\nthe drive. There was a light in the porter’s lodge: when we reached it,\nwe found the porter’s wife just kindling her fire: my trunk, which had\nbeen carried down the evening before, stood corded at the door. It\nwanted but a few minutes of six, and shortly after that hour had\nstruck, the distant roll of wheels announced the coming coach; I went\nto the door and watched its lamps approach rapidly through the gloom.\n“Is she going by herself?” asked the porter’s wife.\n“Yes.”\n“And how far is it?”\n“Fifty miles.”\n“What a long way! I wonder Mrs. Reed is not afraid to trust her so far\nalone.”\nThe coach drew up; there it was at the gates with its four horses and\nits top laden with passengers: the guard and coachman loudly urged\nhaste; my trunk was hoisted up; I was taken from Bessie’s neck, to\nwhich I clung with kisses.\n“Be sure and take good care of her,” cried she to the guard, as he\nlifted me into the inside.\n“Ay, ay!” was the answer: the door was slapped to, a voice exclaimed\n“All right,” and on we drove. Thus was I severed from Bessie and\nGateshead; thus whirled away to unknown, and, as I then deemed, remote\nand mysterious regions.\nI remember but little of the journey; I only know that the day seemed\nto me of a preternatural length, and that we appeared to travel over\nhundreds of miles of road. We passed through several towns, and in one,\na very large one, the coach stopped; the horses were taken out, and the\npassengers alighted to dine. I was carried into an inn, where the guard\nwanted me to have some dinner; but, as I had no appetite, he left me in\nan immense room with a fireplace at each end, a chandelier pendent from\nthe ceiling, and a little red gallery high up against the wall filled\nwith musical instruments. Here I walked about for a long time, feeling\nvery strange, and mortally apprehensive of some one coming in and\nkidnapping me; for I believed in kidnappers, their exploits having\nfrequently figured in Bessie’s fireside chronicles. At last the guard\nreturned; once more I was stowed away in the coach, my protector\nmounted his own seat, sounded his hollow horn, and away we rattled over\nthe “stony street” of L——.\nThe afternoon came on wet and somewhat misty: as it waned into dusk, I\nbegan to feel that we were getting very far indeed from Gateshead: we\nceased to pass through towns; the country changed; great grey hills\nheaved up round the horizon: as twilight deepened, we descended a\nvalley, dark with wood, and long after night had overclouded the\nprospect, I heard a wild wind rushing amongst trees.\nLulled by the sound, I at last dropped asleep; I had not long slumbered\nwhen the sudden cessation of motion awoke me; the coach-door was open,\nand a person like a servant was standing at it: I saw her face and\ndress by the light of the lamps.\n“Is there a little girl called Jane Eyre here?” she asked. I answered\n“Yes,” and was then lifted out; my trunk was handed down, and the coach\ninstantly drove away.\nI was stiff with long sitting, and bewildered with the noise and motion\nof the coach: gathering my faculties, I looked about me. Rain, wind,\nand darkness filled the air; nevertheless, I dimly discerned a wall\nbefore me and a door open in it; through this door I passed with my new\nguide: she shut and locked it behind her. There was now visible a house\nor houses—for the building spread far—with many windows, and lights\nburning in some; we went up a broad pebbly path, splashing wet, and\nwere admitted at a door; then the servant led me through a passage into\na room with a fire, where she left me alone.\nI stood and warmed my numbed fingers over the blaze, then I looked\nround; there was no candle, but the uncertain light from the hearth\nshowed, by intervals, papered walls, carpet, curtains, shining mahogany\nfurniture: it was a parlour, not so spacious or splendid as the\ndrawing-room at Gateshead, but comfortable enough. I was puzzling to\nmake out the subject of a picture on the wall, when the door opened,\nand an individual carrying a light entered; another followed close\nbehind.\nThe first was a tall lady with dark hair, dark eyes, and a pale and\nlarge forehead; her figure was partly enveloped in a shawl, her\ncountenance was grave, her bearing erect.\n“The child is very young to be sent alone,” said she, putting her\ncandle down on the table. She considered me attentively for a minute or\ntwo, then further added—\n“She had better be put to bed soon; she looks tired: are you tired?”\nshe asked, placing her hand on my shoulder.\n“A little, ma’am.”\n“And hungry too, no doubt: let her have some supper before she goes to\nbed, Miss Miller. Is this the first time you have left your parents to\ncome to school, my little girl?”\nI explained to her that I had no parents. She inquired how long they\nhad been dead: then how old I was, what was my name, whether I could\nread, write, and sew a little: then she touched my cheek gently with\nher forefinger, and saying, “She hoped I should be a good child,”\ndismissed me along with Miss Miller.\nThe lady I had left might be about twenty-nine; the one who went with\nme appeared some years younger: the first impressed me by her voice,\nlook, and air. Miss Miller was more ordinary; ruddy in complexion,\nthough of a careworn countenance; hurried in gait and action, like one\nwho had always a multiplicity of tasks on hand: she looked, indeed,\nwhat I afterwards found she really was, an under-teacher. Led by her, I\npassed from compartment to compartment, from passage to passage, of a\nlarge and irregular building; till, emerging from the total and\nsomewhat dreary silence pervading that portion of the house we had\ntraversed, we came upon the hum of many voices, and presently entered a\nwide, long room, with great deal tables, two at each end, on each of\nwhich burnt a pair of candles, and seated all round on benches, a\ncongregation of girls of every age, from nine or ten to twenty. Seen by\nthe dim light of the dips, their number to me appeared countless,\nthough not in reality exceeding eighty; they were uniformly dressed in\nbrown stuff frocks of quaint fashion, and long holland pinafores. It\nwas the hour of study; they were engaged in conning over their\nto-morrow’s task, and the hum I had heard was the combined result of\ntheir whispered repetitions.\nMiss Miller signed to me to sit on a bench near the door, then walking\nup to the top of the long room she cried out—\n“Monitors, collect the lesson-books and put them away!”\nFour tall girls arose from different tables, and going round, gathered\nthe books and removed them. Miss Miller again gave the word of command—\n“Monitors, fetch the supper-trays!”\nThe tall girls went out and returned presently, each bearing a tray,\nwith portions of something, I knew not what, arranged thereon, and a\npitcher of water and mug in the middle of each tray. The portions were\nhanded round; those who liked took a draught of the water, the mug\nbeing common to all. When it came to my turn, I drank, for I was\nthirsty, but did not touch the food, excitement and fatigue rendering\nme incapable of eating: I now saw, however, that it was a thin oaten\ncake shared into fragments.\nThe meal over, prayers were read by Miss Miller, and the classes filed\noff, two and two, upstairs. Overpowered by this time with weariness, I\nscarcely noticed what sort of a place the bedroom was, except that,\nlike the schoolroom, I saw it was very long. To-night I was to be Miss\nMiller’s bed-fellow; she helped me to undress: when laid down I glanced\nat the long rows of beds, each of which was quickly filled with two\noccupants; in ten minutes the single light was extinguished, and amidst\nsilence and complete darkness I fell asleep.\nThe night passed rapidly: I was too tired even to dream; I only once\nawoke to hear the wind rave in furious gusts, and the rain fall in\ntorrents, and to be sensible that Miss Miller had taken her place by my\nside. When I again unclosed my eyes, a loud bell was ringing; the girls\nwere up and dressing; day had not yet begun to dawn, and a rushlight or\ntwo burned in the room. I too rose reluctantly; it was bitter cold, and\nI dressed as well as I could for shivering, and washed when there was a\nbasin at liberty, which did not occur soon, as there was but one basin\nto six girls, on the stands down the middle of the room. Again the bell\nrang: all formed in file, two and two, and in that order descended the\nstairs and entered the cold and dimly lit schoolroom: here prayers were\nread by Miss Miller; afterwards she called out—\n“Form classes!”\nA great tumult succeeded for some minutes, during which Miss Miller\nrepeatedly exclaimed, “Silence!” and “Order!” When it subsided, I saw\nthem all drawn up in four semicircles, before four chairs, placed at\nthe four tables; all held books in their hands, and a great book, like\na Bible, lay on each table, before the vacant seat. A pause of some\nseconds succeeded, filled up by the low, vague hum of numbers; Miss\nMiller walked from class to class, hushing this indefinite sound.\nA distant bell tinkled: immediately three ladies entered the room, each\nwalked to a table and took her seat; Miss Miller assumed the fourth\nvacant chair, which was that nearest the door, and around which the\nsmallest of the children were assembled: to this inferior class I was\ncalled, and placed at the bottom of it.\nBusiness now began: the day’s Collect was repeated, then certain texts\nof Scripture were said, and to these succeeded a protracted reading of\nchapters in the Bible, which lasted an hour. By the time that exercise\nwas terminated, day had fully dawned. The indefatigable bell now\nsounded for the fourth time: the classes were marshalled and marched\ninto another room to breakfast: how glad I was to behold a prospect of\ngetting something to eat! I was now nearly sick from inanition, having\ntaken so little the day before.\nThe refectory was a great, low-ceiled, gloomy room; on two long tables\nsmoked basins of something hot, which, however, to my dismay, sent\nforth an odour far from inviting. I saw a universal manifestation of\ndiscontent when the fumes of the repast met the nostrils of those\ndestined to swallow it; from the van of the procession, the tall girls\nof the first class, rose the whispered words—\n“Disgusting! The porridge is burnt again!”\n“Silence!” ejaculated a voice; not that of Miss Miller, but one of the\nupper teachers, a little and dark personage, smartly dressed, but of\nsomewhat morose aspect, who installed herself at the top of one table,\nwhile a more buxom lady presided at the other. I looked in vain for her\nI had first seen the night before; she was not visible: Miss Miller\noccupied the foot of the table where I sat, and a strange,\nforeign-looking, elderly lady, the French teacher, as I afterwards\nfound, took the corresponding seat at the other board. A long grace was\nsaid and a hymn sung; then a servant brought in some tea for the\nteachers, and the meal began.\nRavenous, and now very faint, I devoured a spoonful or two of my\nportion without thinking of its taste; but the first edge of hunger\nblunted, I perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess; burnt porridge\nis almost as bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over\nit. The spoons were moved slowly: I saw each girl taste her food and\ntry to swallow it; but in most cases the effort was soon relinquished.\nBreakfast was over, and none had breakfasted. Thanks being returned for\nwhat we had not got, and a second hymn chanted, the refectory was\nevacuated for the schoolroom. I was one of the last to go out, and in\npassing the tables, I saw one teacher take a basin of the porridge and\ntaste it; she looked at the others; all their countenances expressed\ndispleasure, and one of them, the stout one, whispered—\n“Abominable stuff! How shameful!”\nA quarter of an hour passed before lessons again began, during which\nthe schoolroom was in a glorious tumult; for that space of time it\nseemed to be permitted to talk loud and more freely, and they used\ntheir privilege. The whole conversation ran on the breakfast, which one\nand all abused roundly. Poor things! it was the sole consolation they\nhad. Miss Miller was now the only teacher in the room: a group of great\ngirls standing about her spoke with serious and sullen gestures. I\nheard the name of Mr. Brocklehurst pronounced by some lips; at which\nMiss Miller shook her head disapprovingly; but she made no great effort\nto check the general wrath; doubtless she shared in it.\nA clock in the schoolroom struck nine; Miss Miller left her circle, and\nstanding in the middle of the room, cried—\n“Silence! To your seats!”\nDiscipline prevailed: in five minutes the confused throng was resolved\ninto order, and comparative silence quelled the Babel clamour of\ntongues. The upper teachers now punctually resumed their posts: but\nstill, all seemed to wait. Ranged on benches down the sides of the\nroom, the eighty girls sat motionless and erect; a quaint assemblage\nthey appeared, all with plain locks combed from their faces, not a curl\nvisible; in brown dresses, made high and surrounded by a narrow tucker\nabout the throat, with little pockets of holland (shaped something like\na Highlander’s purse) tied in front of their frocks, and destined to\nserve the purpose of a work-bag: all, too, wearing woollen stockings\nand country-made shoes, fastened with brass buckles. Above twenty of\nthose clad in this costume were full-grown girls, or rather young\nwomen; it suited them ill, and gave an air of oddity even to the\nprettiest.\nI was still looking at them, and also at intervals examining the\nteachers—none of whom precisely pleased me; for the stout one was a\nlittle coarse, the dark one not a little fierce, the foreigner harsh\nand grotesque, and Miss Miller, poor thing! looked purple,\nweather-beaten, and over-worked—when, as my eye wandered from face to\nface, the whole school rose simultaneously, as if moved by a common\nspring.\nWhat was the matter? I had heard no order given: I was puzzled. Ere I\nhad gathered my wits, the classes were again seated: but as all eyes\nwere now turned to one point, mine followed the general direction, and\nencountered the personage who had received me last night. She stood at\nthe bottom of the long room, on the hearth; for there was a fire at\neach end; she surveyed the two rows of girls silently and gravely. Miss\nMiller approaching, seemed to ask her a question, and having received\nher answer, went back to her place, and said aloud—\n“Monitor of the first class, fetch the globes!”\nWhile the direction was being executed, the lady consulted moved slowly\nup the room. I suppose I have a considerable organ of veneration, for I\nretain yet the sense of admiring awe with which my eyes traced her\nsteps. Seen now, in broad daylight, she looked tall, fair, and shapely;\nbrown eyes with a benignant light in their irids, and a fine pencilling\nof long lashes round, relieved the whiteness of her large front; on\neach of her temples her hair, of a very dark brown, was clustered in\nround curls, according to the fashion of those times, when neither\nsmooth bands nor long ringlets were in vogue; her dress, also in the\nmode of the day, was of purple cloth, relieved by a sort of Spanish\ntrimming of black velvet; a gold watch (watches were not so common then\nas now) shone at her girdle. Let the reader add, to complete the\npicture, refined features; a complexion, if pale, clear; and a stately\nair and carriage, and he will have, at least, as clearly as words can\ngive it, a correct idea of the exterior of Miss Temple—Maria Temple, as\nI afterwards saw the name written in a prayer-book intrusted to me to\ncarry to church.\nThe superintendent of Lowood (for such was this lady) having taken her\nseat before a pair of globes placed on one of the tables, summoned the\nfirst class round her, and commenced giving a lesson on geography; the\nlower classes were called by the teachers: repetitions in history,\ngrammar, &c., went on for an hour; writing and arithmetic succeeded,\nand music lessons were given by Miss Temple to some of the elder girls.\nThe duration of each lesson was measured by the clock, which at last\nstruck twelve. The superintendent rose—\n“I have a word to address to the pupils,” said she.\nThe tumult of cessation from lessons was already breaking forth, but it\nsank at her voice. She went on—\n“You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat; you must be\nhungry:—I have ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese shall be served\nto all.”\nThe teachers looked at her with a sort of surprise.\n“It is to be done on my responsibility,” she added, in an explanatory\ntone to them, and immediately afterwards left the room.\nThe bread and cheese was presently brought in and distributed, to the\nhigh delight and refreshment of the whole school. The order was now\ngiven “To the garden!” Each put on a coarse straw bonnet, with strings\nof coloured calico, and a cloak of grey frieze. I was similarly\nequipped, and, following the stream, I made my way into the open air.\nThe garden was a wide inclosure, surrounded with walls so high as to\nexclude every glimpse of prospect; a covered verandah ran down one\nside, and broad walks bordered a middle space divided into scores of\nlittle beds: these beds were assigned as gardens for the pupils to\ncultivate, and each bed had an owner. When full of flowers they would\ndoubtless look pretty; but now, at the latter end of January, all was\nwintry blight and brown decay. I shuddered as I stood and looked round\nme: it was an inclement day for outdoor exercise; not positively rainy,\nbut darkened by a drizzling yellow fog; all under foot was still\nsoaking wet with the floods of yesterday. The stronger among the girls\nran about and engaged in active games, but sundry pale and thin ones\nherded together for shelter and warmth in the verandah; and amongst\nthese, as the dense mist penetrated to their shivering frames, I heard\nfrequently the sound of a hollow cough.\nAs yet I had spoken to no one, nor did anybody seem to take notice of\nme; I stood lonely enough: but to that feeling of isolation I was\naccustomed; it did not oppress me much. I leant against a pillar of the\nverandah, drew my grey mantle close about me, and, trying to forget the\ncold which nipped me without, and the unsatisfied hunger which gnawed\nme within, delivered myself up to the employment of watching and\nthinking. My reflections were too undefined and fragmentary to merit\nrecord: I hardly yet knew where I was; Gateshead and my past life\nseemed floated away to an immeasurable distance; the present was vague\nand strange, and of the future I could form no conjecture. I looked\nround the convent-like garden, and then up at the house—a large\nbuilding, half of which seemed grey and old, the other half quite new.\nThe new part, containing the schoolroom and dormitory, was lit by\nmullioned and latticed windows, which gave it a church-like aspect; a\nstone tablet over the door bore this inscription:—\nLOWOOD INSTITUTION.\nThis portion was rebuilt A.D. ——, by Naomi Brocklehurst,\nof Brocklehurst Hall, in this county.\n“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works,\nand glorify your Father which is in heaven.”—St. Matt. v. 16.\nI read these words over and over again: I felt that an explanation\nbelonged to them, and was unable fully to penetrate their import. I was\nstill pondering the signification of “Institution,” and endeavouring to\nmake out a connection between the first words and the verse of\nScripture, when the sound of a cough close behind me made me turn my\nhead. I saw a girl sitting on a stone bench near; she was bent over a\nbook, on the perusal of which she seemed intent: from where I stood I\ncould see the title—it was “Rasselas;” a name that struck me as\nstrange, and consequently attractive. In turning a leaf she happened to\nlook up, and I said to her directly—\n“Is your book interesting?” I had already formed the intention of\nasking her to lend it to me some day.\n“I like it,” she answered, after a pause of a second or two, during\nwhich she examined me.\n“What is it about?” I continued. I hardly know where I found the\nhardihood thus to open a conversation with a stranger; the step was\ncontrary to my nature and habits: but I think her occupation touched a\nchord of sympathy somewhere; for I too liked reading, though of a\nfrivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the\nserious or substantial.\n“You may look at it,” replied the girl, offering me the book.\nI did so; a brief examination convinced me that the contents were less\ntaking than the title: “Rasselas” looked dull to my trifling taste; I\nsaw nothing about fairies, nothing about genii; no bright variety\nseemed spread over the closely-printed pages. I returned it to her; she\nreceived it quietly, and without saying anything she was about to\nrelapse into her former studious mood: again I ventured to disturb her—\n“Can you tell me what the writing on that stone over the door means?\nWhat is Lowood Institution?”\n“This house where you are come to live.”\n“And why do they call it Institution? Is it in any way different from\nother schools?”\n“It is partly a charity-school: you and I, and all the rest of us, are\ncharity-children. I suppose you are an orphan: are not either your\nfather or your mother dead?”\n“Both died before I can remember.”\n“Well, all the girls here have lost either one or both parents, and\nthis is called an institution for educating orphans.”\n“Do we pay no money? Do they keep us for nothing?”\n“We pay, or our friends pay, fifteen pounds a year for each.”\n“Then why do they call us charity-children?”\n“Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teaching, and the\ndeficiency is supplied by subscription.”\n“Who subscribes?”\n“Different benevolent-minded ladies and gentlemen in this neighbourhood\nand in London.”\n“Who was Naomi Brocklehurst?”\n“The lady who built the new part of this house as that tablet records,\nand whose son overlooks and directs everything here.”\n“Why?”\n“Because he is treasurer and manager of the establishment.”\n“Then this house does not belong to that tall lady who wears a watch,\nand who said we were to have some bread and cheese?”\n“To Miss Temple? Oh, no! I wish it did: she has to answer to Mr.\nBrocklehurst for all she does. Mr. Brocklehurst buys all our food and\nall our clothes.”\n“Does he live here?”\n“No—two miles off, at a large hall.”\n“Is he a good man?”\n“He is a clergyman, and is said to do a great deal of good.”\n“Did you say that tall lady was called Miss Temple?”\n“Yes.”\n“And what are the other teachers called?”\n“The one with red cheeks is called Miss Smith; she attends to the work,\nand cuts out—for we make our own clothes, our frocks, and pelisses, and\neverything; the little one with black hair is Miss Scatcherd; she\nteaches history and grammar, and hears the second class repetitions;\nand the one who wears a shawl, and has a pocket-handkerchief tied to\nher side with a yellow ribband, is Madame Pierrot: she comes from\nLisle, in France, and teaches French.”\n“Do you like the teachers?”\n“Well enough.”\n“Do you like the little black one, and the Madame ——?—I cannot\npronounce her name as you do.”\n“Miss Scatcherd is hasty—you must take care not to offend her; Madame\nPierrot is not a bad sort of person.”\n“But Miss Temple is the best—isn’t she?”\n“Miss Temple is very good and very clever; she is above the rest,\nbecause she knows far more than they do.”\n“Have you been long here?”\n“Two years.”\n“Are you an orphan?”\n“My mother is dead.”\n“Are you happy here?”\n“You ask rather too many questions. I have given you answers enough for\nthe present: now I want to read.”\nBut at that moment the summons sounded for dinner; all re-entered the\nhouse. The odour which now filled the refectory was scarcely more\nappetising than that which had regaled our nostrils at breakfast: the\ndinner was served in two huge tin-plated vessels, whence rose a strong\nsteam redolent of rancid fat. I found the mess to consist of\nindifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rusty meat, mixed and cooked\ntogether. Of this preparation a tolerably abundant plateful was\napportioned to each pupil. I ate what I could, and wondered within\nmyself whether every day’s fare would be like this.\nAfter dinner, we immediately adjourned to the schoolroom: lessons\nrecommenced, and were continued till five o’clock.\nThe only marked event of the afternoon was, that I saw the girl with\nwhom I had conversed in the verandah dismissed in disgrace by Miss\nScatcherd from a history class, and sent to stand in the middle of the\nlarge schoolroom. The punishment seemed to me in a high degree\nignominious, especially for so great a girl—she looked thirteen or\nupwards. I expected she would show signs of great distress and shame;\nbut to my surprise she neither wept nor blushed: composed, though\ngrave, she stood, the central mark of all eyes. “How can she bear it so\nquietly—so firmly?” I asked of myself. “Were I in her place, it seems\nto me I should wish the earth to open and swallow me up. She looks as\nif she were thinking of something beyond her punishment—beyond her\nsituation: of something not round her nor before her. I have heard of\nday-dreams—is she in a day-dream now? Her eyes are fixed on the floor,\nbut I am sure they do not see it—her sight seems turned in, gone down\ninto her heart: she is looking at what she can remember, I believe; not\nat what is really present. I wonder what sort of a girl she is—whether\ngood or naughty.”\nSoon after five P.M. we had another meal, consisting of a small mug of\ncoffee, and half-a-slice of brown bread. I devoured my bread and drank\nmy coffee with relish; but I should have been glad of as much more—I\nwas still hungry. Half-an-hour’s recreation succeeded, then study; then\nthe glass of water and the piece of oat-cake, prayers, and bed. Such\nwas my first day at Lowood.\n', 'The next day commenced as before, getting up and dressing by rushlight;\nbut this morning we were obliged to dispense with the ceremony of\nwashing; the water in the pitchers was frozen. A change had taken place\nin the weather the preceding evening, and a keen north-east wind,\nwhistling through the crevices of our bedroom windows all night long,\nhad made us shiver in our beds, and turned the contents of the ewers to\nice.\nBefore the long hour and a half of prayers and Bible-reading was over,\nI felt ready to perish with cold. Breakfast-time came at last, and this\nmorning the porridge was not burnt; the quality was eatable, the\nquantity small. How small my portion seemed! I wished it had been\ndoubled.\nIn the course of the day I was enrolled a member of the fourth class,\nand regular tasks and occupations were assigned me: hitherto, I had\nonly been a spectator of the proceedings at Lowood; I was now to become\nan actor therein. At first, being little accustomed to learn by heart,\nthe lessons appeared to me both long and difficult; the frequent change\nfrom task to task, too, bewildered me; and I was glad when, about three\no’clock in the afternoon, Miss Smith put into my hands a border of\nmuslin two yards long, together with needle, thimble, &c., and sent me\nto sit in a quiet corner of the schoolroom, with directions to hem the\nsame. At that hour most of the others were sewing likewise; but one\nclass still stood round Miss Scatcherd’s chair reading, and as all was\nquiet, the subject of their lessons could be heard, together with the\nmanner in which each girl acquitted herself, and the animadversions or\ncommendations of Miss Scatcherd on the performance. It was English\nhistory: among the readers I observed my acquaintance of the verandah:\nat the commencement of the lesson, her place had been at the top of the\nclass, but for some error of pronunciation, or some inattention to\nstops, she was suddenly sent to the very bottom. Even in that obscure\nposition, Miss Scatcherd continued to make her an object of constant\nnotice: she was continually addressing to her such phrases as the\nfollowing:—\n“Burns” (such it seems was her name: the girls here were all called by\ntheir surnames, as boys are elsewhere), “Burns, you are standing on the\nside of your shoe; turn your toes out immediately.” “Burns, you poke\nyour chin most unpleasantly; draw it in.” “Burns, I insist on your\nholding your head up; I will not have you before me in that attitude,”\n&c. &c.\nA chapter having been read through twice, the books were closed and the\ngirls examined. The lesson had comprised part of the reign of Charles\nI., and there were sundry questions about tonnage and poundage and\nship-money, which most of them appeared unable to answer; still, every\nlittle difficulty was solved instantly when it reached Burns: her\nmemory seemed to have retained the substance of the whole lesson, and\nshe was ready with answers on every point. I kept expecting that Miss\nScatcherd would praise her attention; but, instead of that, she\nsuddenly cried out—\n“You dirty, disagreeable girl! you have never cleaned your nails this\nmorning!”\nBurns made no answer: I wondered at her silence.\n“Why,” thought I, “does she not explain that she could neither clean\nher nails nor wash her face, as the water was frozen?”\nMy attention was now called off by Miss Smith desiring me to hold a\nskein of thread: while she was winding it, she talked to me from time\nto time, asking whether I had ever been at school before, whether I\ncould mark, stitch, knit, &c.; till she dismissed me, I could not\npursue my observations on Miss Scatcherd’s movements. When I returned\nto my seat, that lady was just delivering an order of which I did not\ncatch the import; but Burns immediately left the class, and going into\nthe small inner room where the books were kept, returned in half a\nminute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one\nend. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a\nrespectful curtesy; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosed\nher pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her\nneck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns’\neye; and, while I paused from my sewing, because my fingers quivered at\nthis spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a\nfeature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression.\n“Hardened girl!” exclaimed Miss Scatcherd; “nothing can correct you of\nyour slatternly habits: carry the rod away.”\nBurns obeyed: I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the\nbook-closet; she was just putting back her handkerchief into her\npocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek.\nThe play-hour in the evening I thought the pleasantest fraction of the\nday at Lowood: the bit of bread, the draught of coffee swallowed at\nfive o’clock had revived vitality, if it had not satisfied hunger: the\nlong restraint of the day was slackened; the schoolroom felt warmer\nthan in the morning—its fires being allowed to burn a little more\nbrightly, to supply, in some measure, the place of candles, not yet\nintroduced: the ruddy gloaming, the licensed uproar, the confusion of\nmany voices gave one a welcome sense of liberty.\nOn the evening of the day on which I had seen Miss Scatcherd flog her\npupil, Burns, I wandered as usual among the forms and tables and\nlaughing groups without a companion, yet not feeling lonely: when I\npassed the windows, I now and then lifted a blind, and looked out; it\nsnowed fast, a drift was already forming against the lower panes;\nputting my ear close to the window, I could distinguish from the\ngleeful tumult within, the disconsolate moan of the wind outside.\nProbably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would\nhave been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted the\nseparation; that wind would then have saddened my heart; this obscure\nchaos would have disturbed my peace! as it was, I derived from both a\nstrange excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to\nhowl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to\nrise to clamour.\nJumping over forms, and creeping under tables, I made my way to one of\nthe fire-places; there, kneeling by the high wire fender, I found\nBurns, absorbed, silent, abstracted from all round her by the\ncompanionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers.\n“Is it still ‘Rasselas’?” I asked, coming behind her.\n“Yes,” she said, “and I have just finished it.”\nAnd in five minutes more she shut it up. I was glad of this.\n“Now,” thought I, “I can perhaps get her to talk.” I sat down by her on\nthe floor.\n“What is your name besides Burns?”\n“Helen.”\n“Do you come a long way from here?”\n“I come from a place farther north, quite on the borders of Scotland.”\n“Will you ever go back?”\n“I hope so; but nobody can be sure of the future.”\n“You must wish to leave Lowood?”\n“No! why should I? I was sent to Lowood to get an education; and it\nwould be of no use going away until I have attained that object.”\n“But that teacher, Miss Scatcherd, is so cruel to you?”\n“Cruel? Not at all! She is severe: she dislikes my faults.”\n“And if I were in your place I should dislike her; I should resist her.\nIf she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should\nbreak it under her nose.”\n“Probably you would do nothing of the sort: but if you did, Mr.\nBrocklehurst would expel you from the school; that would be a great\ngrief to your relations. It is far better to endure patiently a smart\nwhich nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose\nevil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides,\nthe Bible bids us return good for evil.”\n“But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged, and to be sent to stand\nin the middle of a room full of people; and you are such a great girl:\nI am far younger than you, and I could not bear it.”\n“Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is\nweak and silly to say you _cannot bear_ what it is your fate to be\nrequired to bear.”\nI heard her with wonder: I could not comprehend this doctrine of\nendurance; and still less could I understand or sympathise with the\nforbearance she expressed for her chastiser. Still I felt that Helen\nBurns considered things by a light invisible to my eyes. I suspected\nshe might be right and I wrong; but I would not ponder the matter\ndeeply; like Felix, I put it off to a more convenient season.\n“You say you have faults, Helen: what are they? To me you seem very\ngood.”\n“Then learn from me, not to judge by appearances: I am, as Miss\nScatcherd said, slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things in\norder; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my\nlessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot\n_bear_ to be subjected to systematic arrangements. This is all very\nprovoking to Miss Scatcherd, who is naturally neat, punctual, and\nparticular.”\n“And cross and cruel,” I added; but Helen Burns would not admit my\naddition: she kept silence.\n“Is Miss Temple as severe to you as Miss Scatcherd?”\nAt the utterance of Miss Temple’s name, a soft smile flitted over her\ngrave face.\n“Miss Temple is full of goodness; it pains her to be severe to any one,\neven the worst in the school: she sees my errors, and tells me of them\ngently; and, if I do anything worthy of praise, she gives me my meed\nliberally. One strong proof of my wretchedly defective nature is, that\neven her expostulations, so mild, so rational, have not influence to\ncure me of my faults; and even her praise, though I value it most\nhighly, cannot stimulate me to continued care and foresight.”\n“That is curious,” said I, “it is so easy to be careful.”\n“For _you_ I have no doubt it is. I observed you in your class this\nmorning, and saw you were closely attentive: your thoughts never seemed\nto wander while Miss Miller explained the lesson and questioned you.\nNow, mine continually rove away; when I should be listening to Miss\nScatcherd, and collecting all she says with assiduity, often I lose the\nvery sound of her voice; I fall into a sort of dream. Sometimes I think\nI am in Northumberland, and that the noises I hear round me are the\nbubbling of a little brook which runs through Deepden, near our\nhouse;—then, when it comes to my turn to reply, I have to be awakened;\nand having heard nothing of what was read for listening to the\nvisionary brook, I have no answer ready.”\n“Yet how well you replied this afternoon.”\n“It was mere chance; the subject on which we had been reading had\ninterested me. This afternoon, instead of dreaming of Deepden, I was\nwondering how a man who wished to do right could act so unjustly and\nunwisely as Charles the First sometimes did; and I thought what a pity\nit was that, with his integrity and conscientiousness, he could see no\nfarther than the prerogatives of the crown. If he had but been able to\nlook to a distance, and see how what they call the spirit of the age\nwas tending! Still, I like Charles—I respect him—I pity him, poor\nmurdered king! Yes, his enemies were the worst: they shed blood they\nhad no right to shed. How dared they kill him!”\nHelen was talking to herself now: she had forgotten I could not very\nwell understand her—that I was ignorant, or nearly so, of the subject\nshe discussed. I recalled her to my level.\n“And when Miss Temple teaches you, do your thoughts wander then?”\n“No, certainly, not often; because Miss Temple has generally something\nto say which is newer than my own reflections; her language is\nsingularly agreeable to me, and the information she communicates is\noften just what I wished to gain.”\n“Well, then, with Miss Temple you are good?”\n“Yes, in a passive way: I make no effort; I follow as inclination\nguides me. There is no merit in such goodness.”\n“A great deal: you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I\never desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who\nare cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own\nway: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but\nwould grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we\nshould strike back again very hard; I am sure we should—so hard as to\nteach the person who struck us never to do it again.”\n“You will change your mind, I hope, when you grow older: as yet you are\nbut a little untaught girl.”\n“But I feel this, Helen; I must dislike those who, whatever I do to\nplease them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me\nunjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me\naffection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.”\n“Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine, but Christians and\ncivilised nations disown it.”\n“How? I don’t understand.”\n“It is not violence that best overcomes hate—nor vengeance that most\ncertainly heals injury.”\n“What then?”\n“Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how He acts;\nmake His word your rule, and His conduct your example.”\n“What does He say?”\n“Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that\nhate you and despitefully use you.”\n“Then I should love Mrs. Reed, which I cannot do; I should bless her\nson John, which is impossible.”\nIn her turn, Helen Burns asked me to explain, and I proceeded forthwith\nto pour out, in my own way, the tale of my sufferings and resentments.\nBitter and truculent when excited, I spoke as I felt, without reserve\nor softening.\nHelen heard me patiently to the end: I expected she would then make a\nremark, but she said nothing.\n“Well,” I asked impatiently, “is not Mrs. Reed a hard-hearted, bad\nwoman?”\n“She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because you see, she dislikes\nyour cast of character, as Miss Scatcherd does mine; but how minutely\nyou remember all she has done and said to you! What a singularly deep\nimpression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage\nso brands its record on my feelings. Would you not be happier if you\ntried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it\nexcited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity\nor registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with\nfaults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we\nshall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when\ndebasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh,\nand only the spark of the spirit will remain,—the impalpable principle\nof light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the\ncreature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be\ncommunicated to some being higher than man—perhaps to pass through\ngradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the\nseraph! Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to\ndegenerate from man to fiend? No; I cannot believe that: I hold another\ncreed: which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention; but in\nwhich I delight, and to which I cling: for it extends hope to all: it\nmakes Eternity a rest—a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss.\nBesides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the\ncriminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I\nabhor the last: with this creed revenge never worries my heart,\ndegradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me\ntoo low: I live in calm, looking to the end.”\nHelen’s head, always drooping, sank a little lower as she finished this\nsentence. I saw by her look she wished no longer to talk to me, but\nrather to converse with her own thoughts. She was not allowed much time\nfor meditation: a monitor, a great rough girl, presently came up,\nexclaiming in a strong Cumberland accent—\n“Helen Burns, if you don’t go and put your drawer in order, and fold up\nyour work this minute, I’ll tell Miss Scatcherd to come and look at\nit!”\nHelen sighed as her reverie fled, and getting up, obeyed the monitor\nwithout reply as without delay.\n', 'My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age\neither; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in\nhabituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks. The fear of failure\nin these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my\nlot; though these were no trifles.\nDuring January, February, and part of March, the deep snows, and, after\ntheir melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented our stirring\nbeyond the garden walls, except to go to church; but within these\nlimits we had to pass an hour every day in the open air. Our clothing\nwas insufficient to protect us from the severe cold: we had no boots,\nthe snow got into our shoes and melted there: our ungloved hands became\nnumbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet: I remember well\nthe distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening,\nwhen my feet inflamed; and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw,\nand stiff toes into my shoes in the morning. Then the scanty supply of\nfood was distressing: with the keen appetites of growing children, we\nhad scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From this\ndeficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on\nthe younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls had an\nopportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their\nportion. Many a time I have shared between two claimants the precious\nmorsel of brown bread distributed at tea-time; and after relinquishing\nto a third half the contents of my mug of coffee, I have swallowed the\nremainder with an accompaniment of secret tears, forced from me by the\nexigency of hunger.\nSundays were dreary days in that wintry season. We had to walk two\nmiles to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron officiated. We set out\ncold, we arrived at church colder: during the morning service we became\nalmost paralysed. It was too far to return to dinner, and an allowance\nof cold meat and bread, in the same penurious proportion observed in\nour ordinary meals, was served round between the services.\nAt the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed and\nhilly road, where the bitter winter wind, blowing over a range of snowy\nsummits to the north, almost flayed the skin from our faces.\nI can remember Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly along our\ndrooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered,\ngathered close about her, and encouraging us, by precept and example,\nto keep up our spirits, and march forward, as she said, “like stalwart\nsoldiers.” The other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves\ntoo much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others.\nHow we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when we got\nback! But, to the little ones at least, this was denied: each hearth in\nthe schoolroom was immediately surrounded by a double row of great\ngirls, and behind them the younger children crouched in groups,\nwrapping their starved arms in their pinafores.\nA little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration of\nbread—a whole, instead of a half, slice—with the delicious addition of\na thin scrape of butter: it was the hebdomadal treat to which we all\nlooked forward from Sabbath to Sabbath. I generally contrived to\nreserve a moiety of this bounteous repast for myself; but the remainder\nI was invariably obliged to part with.\nThe Sunday evening was spent in repeating, by heart, the Church\nCatechism, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St. Matthew;\nand in listening to a long sermon, read by Miss Miller, whose\nirrepressible yawns attested her weariness. A frequent interlude of\nthese performances was the enactment of the part of Eutychus by some\nhalf-dozen of little girls, who, overpowered with sleep, would fall\ndown, if not out of the third loft, yet off the fourth form, and be\ntaken up half dead. The remedy was, to thrust them forward into the\ncentre of the schoolroom, and oblige them to stand there till the\nsermon was finished. Sometimes their feet failed them, and they sank\ntogether in a heap; they were then propped up with the monitors’ high\nstools.\nI have not yet alluded to the visits of Mr. Brocklehurst; and indeed\nthat gentleman was from home during the greater part of the first month\nafter my arrival; perhaps prolonging his stay with his friend the\narchdeacon: his absence was a relief to me. I need not say that I had\nmy own reasons for dreading his coming: but come he did at last.\nOne afternoon (I had then been three weeks at Lowood), as I was sitting\nwith a slate in my hand, puzzling over a sum in long division, my eyes,\nraised in abstraction to the window, caught sight of a figure just\npassing: I recognised almost instinctively that gaunt outline; and\nwhen, two minutes after, all the school, teachers included, rose _en\nmasse_, it was not necessary for me to look up in order to ascertain\nwhose entrance they thus greeted. A long stride measured the\nschoolroom, and presently beside Miss Temple, who herself had risen,\nstood the same black column which had frowned on me so ominously from\nthe hearthrug of Gateshead. I now glanced sideways at this piece of\narchitecture. Yes, I was right: it was Mr. Brocklehurst, buttoned up in\na surtout, and looking longer, narrower, and more rigid than ever.\nI had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition; too well I\nremembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Reed about my\ndisposition, &c.; the promise pledged by Mr. Brocklehurst to apprise\nMiss Temple and the teachers of my vicious nature. All along I had been\ndreading the fulfilment of this promise,—I had been looking out daily\nfor the “Coming Man,” whose information respecting my past life and\nconversation was to brand me as a bad child for ever: now there he was.\nHe stood at Miss Temple’s side; he was speaking low in her ear: I did\nnot doubt he was making disclosures of my villainy; and I watched her\neye with painful anxiety, expecting every moment to see its dark orb\nturn on me a glance of repugnance and contempt. I listened too; and as\nI happened to be seated quite at the top of the room, I caught most of\nwhat he said: its import relieved me from immediate apprehension.\n“I suppose, Miss Temple, the thread I bought at Lowton will do; it\nstruck me that it would be just of the quality for the calico chemises,\nand I sorted the needles to match. You may tell Miss Smith that I\nforgot to make a memorandum of the darning needles, but she shall have\nsome papers sent in next week; and she is not, on any account, to give\nout more than one at a time to each pupil: if they have more, they are\napt to be careless and lose them. And, O ma’am! I wish the woollen\nstockings were better looked to!—when I was here last, I went into the\nkitchen-garden and examined the clothes drying on the line; there was a\nquantity of black hose in a very bad state of repair: from the size of\nthe holes in them I was sure they had not been well mended from time to\ntime.”\nHe paused.\n“Your directions shall be attended to, sir,” said Miss Temple.\n“And, ma’am,” he continued, “the laundress tells me some of the girls\nhave two clean tuckers in the week: it is too much; the rules limit\nthem to one.”\n“I think I can explain that circumstance, sir. Agnes and Catherine\nJohnstone were invited to take tea with some friends at Lowton last\nThursday, and I gave them leave to put on clean tuckers for the\noccasion.”\nMr. Brocklehurst nodded.\n“Well, for once it may pass; but please not to let the circumstance\noccur too often. And there is another thing which surprised me; I find,\nin settling accounts with the housekeeper, that a lunch, consisting of\nbread and cheese, has twice been served out to the girls during the\npast fortnight. How is this? I looked over the regulations, and I find\nno such meal as lunch mentioned. Who introduced this innovation? and by\nwhat authority?”\n“I must be responsible for the circumstance, sir,” replied Miss Temple:\n“the breakfast was so ill prepared that the pupils could not possibly\neat it; and I dared not allow them to remain fasting till dinner-time.”\n“Madam, allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing up\nthese girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and\nindulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any\nlittle accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the\nspoiling of a meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish, the\nincident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more\ndelicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the\naim of this institution; it ought to be improved to the spiritual\nedification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude\nunder the temporary privation. A brief address on those occasions would\nnot be mistimed, wherein a judicious instructor would take the\nopportunity of referring to the sufferings of the primitive Christians;\nto the torments of martyrs; to the exhortations of our blessed Lord\nHimself, calling upon His disciples to take up their cross and follow\nHim; to His warnings that man shall not live by bread alone, but by\nevery word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; to His divine\nconsolations, ‘If ye suffer hunger or thirst for My sake, happy are\nye.’ Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt\nporridge, into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile\nbodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!”\nMr. Brocklehurst again paused—perhaps overcome by his feelings. Miss\nTemple had looked down when he first began to speak to her; but she now\ngazed straight before her, and her face, naturally pale as marble,\nappeared to be assuming also the coldness and fixity of that material;\nespecially her mouth, closed as if it would have required a sculptor’s\nchisel to open it, and her brow settled gradually into petrified\nseverity.\nMeantime, Mr. Brocklehurst, standing on the hearth with his hands\nbehind his back, majestically surveyed the whole school. Suddenly his\neye gave a blink, as if it had met something that either dazzled or\nshocked its pupil; turning, he said in more rapid accents than he had\nhitherto used—\n“Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what—_what_ is that girl with curled hair?\nRed hair, ma’am, curled—curled all over?” And extending his cane he\npointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he did so.\n“It is Julia Severn,” replied Miss Temple, very quietly.\n“Julia Severn, ma’am! And why has she, or any other, curled hair? Why,\nin defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she\nconform to the world so openly—here in an evangelical, charitable\nestablishment—as to wear her hair one mass of curls?”\n“Julia’s hair curls naturally,” returned Miss Temple, still more\nquietly.\n“Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature; I wish these\ngirls to be the children of Grace: and why that abundance? I have again\nand again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely,\nmodestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl’s hair must be cut off\nentirely; I will send a barber to-morrow: and I see others who have far\ntoo much of the excrescence—that tall girl, tell her to turn round.\nTell all the first form to rise up and direct their faces to the wall.”\nMiss Temple passed her handkerchief over her lips, as if to smooth away\nthe involuntary smile that curled them; she gave the order, however,\nand when the first class could take in what was required of them, they\nobeyed. Leaning a little back on my bench, I could see the looks and\ngrimaces with which they commented on this manoeuvre: it was a pity Mr.\nBrocklehurst could not see them too; he would perhaps have felt that,\nwhatever he might do with the outside of the cup and platter, the\ninside was further beyond his interference than he imagined.\nHe scrutinised the reverse of these living medals some five minutes,\nthen pronounced sentence. These words fell like the knell of doom—\n“All those top-knots must be cut off.”\nMiss Temple seemed to remonstrate.\n“Madam,” he pursued, “I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of\nthis world: my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the\nflesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and\nsobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the\nyoung persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which\nvanity itself might have woven; these, I repeat, must be cut off; think\nof the time wasted, of—”\nMr. Brocklehurst was here interrupted: three other visitors, ladies,\nnow entered the room. They ought to have come a little sooner to have\nheard his lecture on dress, for they were splendidly attired in velvet,\nsilk, and furs. The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and\nseventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich\nplumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a\nprofusion of light tresses, elaborately curled; the elder lady was\nenveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a\nfalse front of French curls.\nThese ladies were deferentially received by Miss Temple, as Mrs. and\nthe Misses Brocklehurst, and conducted to seats of honour at the top of\nthe room. It seems they had come in the carriage with their reverend\nrelative, and had been conducting a rummaging scrutiny of the room\nupstairs, while he transacted business with the housekeeper, questioned\nthe laundress, and lectured the superintendent. They now proceeded to\naddress divers remarks and reproofs to Miss Smith, who was charged with\nthe care of the linen and the inspection of the dormitories: but I had\nno time to listen to what they said; other matters called off and\nenchanted my attention.\nHitherto, while gathering up the discourse of Mr. Brocklehurst and Miss\nTemple, I had not, at the same time, neglected precautions to secure my\npersonal safety; which I thought would be effected, if I could only\nelude observation. To this end, I had sat well back on the form, and\nwhile seeming to be busy with my sum, had held my slate in such a\nmanner as to conceal my face: I might have escaped notice, had not my\ntreacherous slate somehow happened to slip from my hand, and falling\nwith an obtrusive crash, directly drawn every eye upon me; I knew it\nwas all over now, and, as I stooped to pick up the two fragments of\nslate, I rallied my forces for the worst. It came.\n“A careless girl!” said Mr. Brocklehurst, and immediately after—“It is\nthe new pupil, I perceive.” And before I could draw breath, “I must not\nforget I have a word to say respecting her.” Then aloud: how loud it\nseemed to me! “Let the child who broke her slate come forward!”\nOf my own accord I could not have stirred; I was paralysed: but the two\ngreat girls who sat on each side of me, set me on my legs and pushed me\ntowards the dread judge, and then Miss Temple gently assisted me to his\nvery feet, and I caught her whispered counsel—\n“Don’t be afraid, Jane, I saw it was an accident; you shall not be\npunished.”\nThe kind whisper went to my heart like a dagger.\n“Another minute, and she will despise me for a hypocrite,” thought I;\nand an impulse of fury against Reed, Brocklehurst, and Co. bounded in\nmy pulses at the conviction. I was no Helen Burns.\n“Fetch that stool,” said Mr. Brocklehurst, pointing to a very high one\nfrom which a monitor had just risen: it was brought.\n“Place the child upon it.”\nAnd I was placed there, by whom I don’t know: I was in no condition to\nnote particulars; I was only aware that they had hoisted me up to the\nheight of Mr. Brocklehurst’s nose, that he was within a yard of me, and\nthat a spread of shot orange and purple silk pelisses and a cloud of\nsilvery plumage extended and waved below me.\nMr. Brocklehurst hemmed.\n“Ladies,” said he, turning to his family, “Miss Temple, teachers, and\nchildren, you all see this girl?”\nOf course they did; for I felt their eyes directed like burning-glasses\nagainst my scorched skin.\n“You see she is yet young; you observe she possesses the ordinary form\nof childhood; God has graciously given her the shape that He has given\nto all of us; no signal deformity points her out as a marked character.\nWho would think that the Evil One had already found a servant and agent\nin her? Yet such, I grieve to say, is the case.”\nA pause—in which I began to steady the palsy of my nerves, and to feel\nthat the Rubicon was passed; and that the trial, no longer to be\nshirked, must be firmly sustained.\n“My dear children,” pursued the black marble clergyman, with pathos,\n“this is a sad, a melancholy occasion; for it becomes my duty to warn\nyou, that this girl, who might be one of God’s own lambs, is a little\ncastaway: not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper\nand an alien. You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her\nexample; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports,\nand shut her out from your converse. Teachers, you must watch her: keep\nyour eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinise her\nactions, punish her body to save her soul: if, indeed, such salvation\nbe possible, for (my tongue falters while I tell it) this girl, this\nchild, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen\nwho says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut—this girl\nis—a liar!”\nNow came a pause of ten minutes, during which I, by this time in\nperfect possession of my wits, observed all the female Brocklehursts\nproduce their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics,\nwhile the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the two younger\nones whispered, “How shocking!”\nMr. Brocklehurst resumed.\n“This I learned from her benefactress; from the pious and charitable\nlady who adopted her in her orphan state, reared her as her own\ndaughter, and whose kindness, whose generosity the unhappy girl repaid\nby an ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that at last her excellent\npatroness was obliged to separate her from her own young ones, fearful\nlest her vicious example should contaminate their purity: she has sent\nher here to be healed, even as the Jews of old sent their diseased to\nthe troubled pool of Bethesda; and, teachers, superintendent, I beg of\nyou not to allow the waters to stagnate round her.”\nWith this sublime conclusion, Mr. Brocklehurst adjusted the top button\nof his surtout, muttered something to his family, who rose, bowed to\nMiss Temple, and then all the great people sailed in state from the\nroom. Turning at the door, my judge said—\n“Let her stand half-an-hour longer on that stool, and let no one speak\nto her during the remainder of the day.”\nThere was I, then, mounted aloft; I, who had said I could not bear the\nshame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room, was now\nexposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. What my sensations\nwere, no language can describe; but just as they all rose, stifling my\nbreath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me: in\npassing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What\nan extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new\nfeeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave\nor victim, and imparted strength in the transit. I mastered the rising\nhysteria, lifted up my head, and took a firm stand on the stool. Helen\nBurns asked some slight question about her work of Miss Smith, was\nchidden for the triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and\nsmiled at me as she again went by. What a smile! I remember it now, and\nI know that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage; it\nlit up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken grey eye, like\na reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet at that moment Helen\nBurns wore on her arm “the untidy badge;” scarcely an hour ago I had\nheard her condemned by Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water on\nthe morrow because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out. Such\nis the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the\nclearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd’s can only see those\nminute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.\n', 'Ere the half-hour ended, five o’clock struck; school was dismissed, and\nall were gone into the refectory to tea. I now ventured to descend: it\nwas deep dusk; I retired into a corner and sat down on the floor. The\nspell by which I had been so far supported began to dissolve; reaction\ntook place, and soon, so overwhelming was the grief that seized me, I\nsank prostrate with my face to the ground. Now I wept: Helen Burns was\nnot here; nothing sustained me; left to myself I abandoned myself, and\nmy tears watered the boards. I had meant to be so good, and to do so\nmuch at Lowood: to make so many friends, to earn respect and win\naffection. Already I had made visible progress: that very morning I had\nreached the head of my class; Miss Miller had praised me warmly; Miss\nTemple had smiled approbation; she had promised to teach me drawing,\nand to let me learn French, if I continued to make similar improvement\ntwo months longer: and then I was well received by my fellow-pupils;\ntreated as an equal by those of my own age, and not molested by any;\nnow, here I lay again crushed and trodden on; and could I ever rise\nmore?\n“Never,” I thought; and ardently I wished to die. While sobbing out\nthis wish in broken accents, some one approached: I started up—again\nHelen Burns was near me; the fading fires just showed her coming up the\nlong, vacant room; she brought my coffee and bread.\n“Come, eat something,” she said; but I put both away from me, feeling\nas if a drop or a crumb would have choked me in my present condition.\nHelen regarded me, probably with surprise: I could not now abate my\nagitation, though I tried hard; I continued to weep aloud. She sat down\non the ground near me, embraced her knees with her arms, and rested her\nhead upon them; in that attitude she remained silent as an Indian. I\nwas the first who spoke—\n“Helen, why do you stay with a girl whom everybody believes to be a\nliar?”\n“Everybody, Jane? Why, there are only eighty people who have heard you\ncalled so, and the world contains hundreds of millions.”\n“But what have I to do with millions? The eighty I know despise me.”\n“Jane, you are mistaken: probably not one in the school either despises\nor dislikes you: many, I am sure, pity you much.”\n“How can they pity me after what Mr. Brocklehurst has said?”\n“Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god: nor is he even a great and admired man:\nhe is little liked here; he never took steps to make himself liked. Had\nhe treated you as an especial favourite, you would have found enemies,\ndeclared or covert, all around you; as it is, the greater number would\noffer you sympathy if they dared. Teachers and pupils may look coldly\non you for a day or two, but friendly feelings are concealed in their\nhearts; and if you persevere in doing well, these feelings will ere\nlong appear so much the more evidently for their temporary suppression.\nBesides, Jane”—she paused.\n“Well, Helen?” said I, putting my hand into hers: she chafed my fingers\ngently to warm them, and went on—\n“If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own\nconscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be\nwithout friends.”\n“No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if\nothers don’t love me I would rather die than live—I cannot bear to be\nsolitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from\nyou, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly\nsubmit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or\nto stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest—”\n“Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are\ntoo impulsive, too vehement; the sovereign hand that created your\nframe, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than\nyour feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth,\nand besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom\nof spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those\nspirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were\ndying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred\ncrushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence (if\ninnocent we be: as I know you are of this charge which Mr. Brocklehurst\nhas weakly and pompously repeated at second-hand from Mrs. Reed; for I\nread a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and\nGod waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a\nfull reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress,\nwhen life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to\nhappiness—to glory?”\nI was silent; Helen had calmed me; but in the tranquillity she imparted\nthere was an alloy of inexpressible sadness. I felt the impression of\nwoe as she spoke, but I could not tell whence it came; and when, having\ndone speaking, she breathed a little fast and coughed a short cough, I\nmomentarily forgot my own sorrows to yield to a vague concern for her.\nResting my head on Helen’s shoulder, I put my arms round her waist; she\ndrew me to her, and we reposed in silence. We had not sat long thus,\nwhen another person came in. Some heavy clouds, swept from the sky by a\nrising wind, had left the moon bare; and her light, streaming in\nthrough a window near, shone full both on us and on the approaching\nfigure, which we at once recognised as Miss Temple.\n“I came on purpose to find you, Jane Eyre,” said she; “I want you in my\nroom; and as Helen Burns is with you, she may come too.”\nWe went; following the superintendent’s guidance, we had to thread some\nintricate passages, and mount a staircase before we reached her\napartment; it contained a good fire, and looked cheerful. Miss Temple\ntold Helen Burns to be seated in a low arm-chair on one side of the\nhearth, and herself taking another, she called me to her side.\n“Is it all over?” she asked, looking down at my face. “Have you cried\nyour grief away?”\n“I am afraid I never shall do that.”\n“Why?”\n“Because I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma’am, and everybody\nelse, will now think me wicked.”\n“We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. Continue\nto act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us.”\n“Shall I, Miss Temple?”\n“You will,” said she, passing her arm round me. “And now tell me who is\nthe lady whom Mr. Brocklehurst called your benefactress?”\n“Mrs. Reed, my uncle’s wife. My uncle is dead, and he left me to her\ncare.”\n“Did she not, then, adopt you of her own accord?”\n“No, ma’am; she was sorry to have to do it: but my uncle, as I have\noften heard the servants say, got her to promise before he died that\nshe would always keep me.”\n“Well now, Jane, you know, or at least I will tell you, that when a\ncriminal is accused, he is always allowed to speak in his own defence.\nYou have been charged with falsehood; defend yourself to me as well as\nyou can. Say whatever your memory suggests is true; but add nothing and\nexaggerate nothing.”\nI resolved, in the depth of my heart, that I would be most\nmoderate—most correct; and, having reflected a few minutes in order to\narrange coherently what I had to say, I told her all the story of my\nsad childhood. Exhausted by emotion, my language was more subdued than\nit generally was when it developed that sad theme; and mindful of\nHelen’s warnings against the indulgence of resentment, I infused into\nthe narrative far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary. Thus\nrestrained and simplified, it sounded more credible: I felt as I went\non that Miss Temple fully believed me.\nIn the course of the tale I had mentioned Mr. Lloyd as having come to\nsee me after the fit: for I never forgot the, to me, frightful episode\nof the red-room: in detailing which, my excitement was sure, in some\ndegree, to break bounds; for nothing could soften in my recollection\nthe spasm of agony which clutched my heart when Mrs. Reed spurned my\nwild supplication for pardon, and locked me a second time in the dark\nand haunted chamber.\nI had finished: Miss Temple regarded me a few minutes in silence; she\nthen said—\n“I know something of Mr. Lloyd; I shall write to him; if his reply\nagrees with your statement, you shall be publicly cleared from every\nimputation; to me, Jane, you are clear now.”\nShe kissed me, and still keeping me at her side (where I was well\ncontented to stand, for I derived a child’s pleasure from the\ncontemplation of her face, her dress, her one or two ornaments, her\nwhite forehead, her clustered and shining curls, and beaming dark\neyes), she proceeded to address Helen Burns.\n“How are you to-night, Helen? Have you coughed much to-day?”\n“Not quite so much, I think, ma’am.”\n“And the pain in your chest?”\n“It is a little better.”\nMiss Temple got up, took her hand and examined her pulse; then she\nreturned to her own seat: as she resumed it, I heard her sigh low. She\nwas pensive a few minutes, then rousing herself, she said cheerfully—\n“But you two are my visitors to-night; I must treat you as such.” She\nrang her bell.\n“Barbara,” she said to the servant who answered it, “I have not yet had\ntea; bring the tray and place cups for these two young ladies.”\nAnd a tray was soon brought. How pretty, to my eyes, did the china cups\nand bright teapot look, placed on the little round table near the fire!\nHow fragrant was the steam of the beverage, and the scent of the toast!\nof which, however, I, to my dismay (for I was beginning to be hungry)\ndiscerned only a very small portion: Miss Temple discerned it too.\n“Barbara,” said she, “can you not bring a little more bread and butter?\nThere is not enough for three.”\nBarbara went out: she returned soon—\n“Madam, Mrs. Harden says she has sent up the usual quantity.”\nMrs. Harden, be it observed, was the housekeeper: a woman after Mr.\nBrocklehurst’s own heart, made up of equal parts of whalebone and iron.\n“Oh, very well!” returned Miss Temple; “we must make it do, Barbara, I\nsuppose.” And as the girl withdrew she added, smiling, “Fortunately, I\nhave it in my power to supply deficiencies for this once.”\nHaving invited Helen and me to approach the table, and placed before\neach of us a cup of tea with one delicious but thin morsel of toast,\nshe got up, unlocked a drawer, and taking from it a parcel wrapped in\npaper, disclosed presently to our eyes a good-sized seed-cake.\n“I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you,” said she,\n“but as there is so little toast, you must have it now,” and she\nproceeded to cut slices with a generous hand.\nWe feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia; and not the least\ndelight of the entertainment was the smile of gratification with which\nour hostess regarded us, as we satisfied our famished appetites on the\ndelicate fare she liberally supplied.\nTea over and the tray removed, she again summoned us to the fire; we\nsat one on each side of her, and now a conversation followed between\nher and Helen, which it was indeed a privilege to be admitted to hear.\nMiss Temple had always something of serenity in her air, of state in\nher mien, of refined propriety in her language, which precluded\ndeviation into the ardent, the excited, the eager: something which\nchastened the pleasure of those who looked on her and listened to her,\nby a controlling sense of awe; and such was my feeling now: but as to\nHelen Burns, I was struck with wonder.\nThe refreshing meal, the brilliant fire, the presence and kindness of\nher beloved instructress, or, perhaps, more than all these, something\nin her own unique mind, had roused her powers within her. They woke,\nthey kindled: first, they glowed in the bright tint of her cheek, which\ntill this hour I had never seen but pale and bloodless; then they shone\nin the liquid lustre of her eyes, which had suddenly acquired a beauty\nmore singular than that of Miss Temple’s—a beauty neither of fine\ncolour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of\nmovement, of radiance. Then her soul sat on her lips, and language\nflowed, from what source I cannot tell. Has a girl of fourteen a heart\nlarge enough, vigorous enough, to hold the swelling spring of pure,\nfull, fervid eloquence? Such was the characteristic of Helen’s\ndiscourse on that, to me, memorable evening; her spirit seemed\nhastening to live within a very brief span as much as many live during\na protracted existence.\nThey conversed of things I had never heard of; of nations and times\npast; of countries far away; of secrets of nature discovered or guessed\nat: they spoke of books: how many they had read! What stores of\nknowledge they possessed! Then they seemed so familiar with French\nnames and French authors: but my amazement reached its climax when Miss\nTemple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall the\nLatin her father had taught her, and taking a book from a shelf, bade\nher read and construe a page of Virgil; and Helen obeyed, my organ of\nveneration expanding at every sounding line. She had scarcely finished\nere the bell announced bedtime! no delay could be admitted; Miss Temple\nembraced us both, saying, as she drew us to her heart—\n“God bless you, my children!”\nHelen she held a little longer than me: she let her go more\nreluctantly; it was Helen her eye followed to the door; it was for her\nshe a second time breathed a sad sigh; for her she wiped a tear from\nher cheek.\nOn reaching the bedroom, we heard the voice of Miss Scatcherd: she was\nexamining drawers; she had just pulled out Helen Burns’s, and when we\nentered Helen was greeted with a sharp reprimand, and told that\nto-morrow she should have half-a-dozen of untidily folded articles\npinned to her shoulder.\n“My things were indeed in shameful disorder,” murmured Helen to me, in\na low voice: “I intended to have arranged them, but I forgot.”\nNext morning, Miss Scatcherd wrote in conspicuous characters on a piece\nof pasteboard the word “Slattern,” and bound it like a phylactery round\nHelen’s large, mild, intelligent, and benign-looking forehead. She wore\nit till evening, patient, unresentful, regarding it as a deserved\npunishment. The moment Miss Scatcherd withdrew after afternoon school,\nI ran to Helen, tore it off, and thrust it into the fire: the fury of\nwhich she was incapable had been burning in my soul all day, and tears,\nhot and large, had continually been scalding my cheek; for the\nspectacle of her sad resignation gave me an intolerable pain at the\nheart.\nAbout a week subsequently to the incidents above narrated, Miss Temple,\nwho had written to Mr. Lloyd, received his answer: it appeared that\nwhat he said went to corroborate my account. Miss Temple, having\nassembled the whole school, announced that inquiry had been made into\nthe charges alleged against Jane Eyre, and that she was most happy to\nbe able to pronounce her completely cleared from every imputation. The\nteachers then shook hands with me and kissed me, and a murmur of\npleasure ran through the ranks of my companions.\nThus relieved of a grievous load, I from that hour set to work afresh,\nresolved to pioneer my way through every difficulty: I toiled hard, and\nmy success was proportionate to my efforts; my memory, not naturally\ntenacious, improved with practice; exercise sharpened my wits; in a few\nweeks I was promoted to a higher class; in less than two months I was\nallowed to commence French and drawing. I learned the first two tenses\nof the verb _Etre_, and sketched my first cottage (whose walls,\nby-the-bye, outrivalled in slope those of the leaning tower of Pisa),\non the same day. That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in\nimagination the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread\nand new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings: I\nfeasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings, which I saw in the\ndark; all the work of my own hands: freely pencilled houses and trees,\npicturesque rocks and ruins, Cuyp-like groups of cattle, sweet\npaintings of butterflies hovering over unblown roses, of birds picking\nat ripe cherries, of wren’s nests enclosing pearl-like eggs, wreathed\nabout with young ivy sprays. I examined, too, in thought, the\npossibility of my ever being able to translate currently a certain\nlittle French story which Madame Pierrot had that day shown me; nor was\nthat problem solved to my satisfaction ere I fell sweetly asleep.\nWell has Solomon said—“Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than\na stalled ox and hatred therewith.”\nI would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for\nGateshead and its daily luxuries.\n', 'But the privations, or rather the hardships, of Lowood lessened. Spring\ndrew on: she was indeed already come; the frosts of winter had ceased;\nits snows were melted, its cutting winds ameliorated. My wretched feet,\nflayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of January, began to\nheal and subside under the gentler breathings of April; the nights and\nmornings no longer by their Canadian temperature froze the very blood\nin our veins; we could now endure the play-hour passed in the garden:\nsometimes on a sunny day it began even to be pleasant and genial, and a\ngreenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily,\nsuggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each\nmorning brighter traces of her steps. Flowers peeped out amongst the\nleaves; snow-drops, crocuses, purple auriculas, and golden-eyed\npansies. On Thursday afternoons (half-holidays) we now took walks, and\nfound still sweeter flowers opening by the wayside, under the hedges.\nI discovered, too, that a great pleasure, an enjoyment which the\nhorizon only bounded, lay all outside the high and spike-guarded walls\nof our garden: this pleasure consisted in prospect of noble summits\ngirdling a great hill-hollow, rich in verdure and shadow; in a bright\nbeck, full of dark stones and sparkling eddies. How different had this\nscene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky of winter,\nstiffened in frost, shrouded with snow!—when mists as chill as death\nwandered to the impulse of east winds along those purple peaks, and\nrolled down “ing” and holm till they blended with the frozen fog of the\nbeck! That beck itself was then a torrent, turbid and curbless: it tore\nasunder the wood, and sent a raving sound through the air, often\nthickened with wild rain or whirling sleet; and for the forest on its\nbanks, _that_ showed only ranks of skeletons.\nApril advanced to May: a bright serene May it was; days of blue sky,\nplacid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled up its\nduration. And now vegetation matured with vigour; Lowood shook loose\nits tresses; it became all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and\noak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up\nprofusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its\nhollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its\nwild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed\nspots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre. All this I enjoyed often\nand fully, free, unwatched, and almost alone: for this unwonted liberty\nand pleasure there was a cause, to which it now becomes my task to\nadvert.\nHave I not described a pleasant site for a dwelling, when I speak of it\nas bosomed in hill and wood, and rising from the verge of a stream?\nAssuredly, pleasant enough: but whether healthy or not is another\nquestion.\nThat forest-dell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of fog and fog-bred\npestilence; which, quickening with the quickening spring, crept into\nthe Orphan Asylum, breathed typhus through its crowded schoolroom and\ndormitory, and, ere May arrived, transformed the seminary into an\nhospital.\nSemi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the pupils\nto receive infection: forty-five out of the eighty girls lay ill at one\ntime. Classes were broken up, rules relaxed. The few who continued well\nwere allowed almost unlimited license; because the medical attendant\ninsisted on the necessity of frequent exercise to keep them in health:\nand had it been otherwise, no one had leisure to watch or restrain\nthem. Miss Temple’s whole attention was absorbed by the patients: she\nlived in the sick-room, never quitting it except to snatch a few hours’\nrest at night. The teachers were fully occupied with packing up and\nmaking other necessary preparations for the departure of those girls\nwho were fortunate enough to have friends and relations able and\nwilling to remove them from the seat of contagion. Many, already\nsmitten, went home only to die: some died at the school, and were\nburied quietly and quickly, the nature of the malady forbidding delay.\nWhile disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood, and death its\nfrequent visitor; while there was gloom and fear within its walls;\nwhile its rooms and passages steamed with hospital smells, the drug and\nthe pastille striving vainly to overcome the effluvia of mortality,\nthat bright May shone unclouded over the bold hills and beautiful\nwoodland out of doors. Its garden, too, glowed with flowers: hollyhocks\nhad sprung up tall as trees, lilies had opened, tulips and roses were\nin bloom; the borders of the little beds were gay with pink thrift and\ncrimson double daisies; the sweetbriars gave out, morning and evening,\ntheir scent of spice and apples; and these fragrant treasures were all\nuseless for most of the inmates of Lowood, except to furnish now and\nthen a handful of herbs and blossoms to put in a coffin.\nBut I, and the rest who continued well, enjoyed fully the beauties of\nthe scene and season; they let us ramble in the wood, like gipsies,\nfrom morning till night; we did what we liked, went where we liked: we\nlived better too. Mr. Brocklehurst and his family never came near\nLowood now: household matters were not scrutinised into; the cross\nhousekeeper was gone, driven away by the fear of infection; her\nsuccessor, who had been matron at the Lowton Dispensary, unused to the\nways of her new abode, provided with comparative liberality. Besides,\nthere were fewer to feed; the sick could eat little; our\nbreakfast-basins were better filled; when there was no time to prepare\na regular dinner, which often happened, she would give us a large piece\nof cold pie, or a thick slice of bread and cheese, and this we carried\naway with us to the wood, where we each chose the spot we liked best,\nand dined sumptuously.\nMy favourite seat was a smooth and broad stone, rising white and dry\nfrom the very middle of the beck, and only to be got at by wading\nthrough the water; a feat I accomplished barefoot. The stone was just\nbroad enough to accommodate, comfortably, another girl and me, at that\ntime my chosen comrade—one Mary Ann Wilson; a shrewd, observant\npersonage, whose society I took pleasure in, partly because she was\nwitty and original, and partly because she had a manner which set me at\nmy ease. Some years older than I, she knew more of the world, and could\ntell me many things I liked to hear: with her my curiosity found\ngratification: to my faults also she gave ample indulgence, never\nimposing curb or rein on anything I said. She had a turn for narrative,\nI for analysis; she liked to inform, I to question; so we got on\nswimmingly together, deriving much entertainment, if not much\nimprovement, from our mutual intercourse.\nAnd where, meantime, was Helen Burns? Why did I not spend these sweet\ndays of liberty with her? Had I forgotten her? or was I so worthless as\nto have grown tired of her pure society? Surely the Mary Ann Wilson I\nhave mentioned was inferior to my first acquaintance: she could only\ntell me amusing stories, and reciprocate any racy and pungent gossip I\nchose to indulge in; while, if I have spoken truth of Helen, she was\nqualified to give those who enjoyed the privilege of her converse a\ntaste of far higher things.\nTrue, reader; and I knew and felt this: and though I am a defective\nbeing, with many faults and few redeeming points, yet I never tired of\nHelen Burns; nor ever ceased to cherish for her a sentiment of\nattachment, as strong, tender, and respectful as any that ever animated\nmy heart. How could it be otherwise, when Helen, at all times and under\nall circumstances, evinced for me a quiet and faithful friendship,\nwhich ill-humour never soured, nor irritation never troubled? But Helen\nwas ill at present: for some weeks she had been removed from my sight\nto I knew not what room upstairs. She was not, I was told, in the\nhospital portion of the house with the fever patients; for her\ncomplaint was consumption, not typhus: and by consumption I, in my\nignorance, understood something mild, which time and care would be sure\nto alleviate.\nI was confirmed in this idea by the fact of her once or twice coming\ndownstairs on very warm sunny afternoons, and being taken by Miss\nTemple into the garden; but, on these occasions, I was not allowed to\ngo and speak to her; I only saw her from the schoolroom window, and\nthen not distinctly; for she was much wrapped up, and sat at a distance\nunder the verandah.\nOne evening, in the beginning of June, I had stayed out very late with\nMary Ann in the wood; we had, as usual, separated ourselves from the\nothers, and had wandered far; so far that we lost our way, and had to\nask it at a lonely cottage, where a man and woman lived, who looked\nafter a herd of half-wild swine that fed on the mast in the wood. When\nwe got back, it was after moonrise: a pony, which we knew to be the\nsurgeon’s, was standing at the garden door. Mary Ann remarked that she\nsupposed some one must be very ill, as Mr. Bates had been sent for at\nthat time of the evening. She went into the house; I stayed behind a\nfew minutes to plant in my garden a handful of roots I had dug up in\nthe forest, and which I feared would wither if I left them till the\nmorning. This done, I lingered yet a little longer: the flowers smelt\nso sweet as the dew fell; it was such a pleasant evening, so serene, so\nwarm; the still glowing west promised so fairly another fine day on the\nmorrow; the moon rose with such majesty in the grave east. I was noting\nthese things and enjoying them as a child might, when it entered my\nmind as it had never done before:—\n“How sad to be lying now on a sick bed, and to be in danger of dying!\nThis world is pleasant—it would be dreary to be called from it, and to\nhave to go who knows where?”\nAnd then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had\nbeen infused into it concerning heaven and hell; and for the first time\nit recoiled, baffled; and for the first time glancing behind, on each\nside, and before it, it saw all round an unfathomed gulf: it felt the\none point where it stood—the present; all the rest was formless cloud\nand vacant depth; and it shuddered at the thought of tottering, and\nplunging amid that chaos. While pondering this new idea, I heard the\nfront door open; Mr. Bates came out, and with him was a nurse. After\nshe had seen him mount his horse and depart, she was about to close the\ndoor, but I ran up to her.\n“How is Helen Burns?”\n“Very poorly,” was the answer.\n“Is it her Mr. Bates has been to see?”\n“Yes.”\n“And what does he say about her?”\n“He says she’ll not be here long.”\nThis phrase, uttered in my hearing yesterday, would have only conveyed\nthe notion that she was about to be removed to Northumberland, to her\nown home. I should not have suspected that it meant she was dying; but\nI knew instantly now! It opened clear on my comprehension that Helen\nBurns was numbering her last days in this world, and that she was going\nto be taken to the region of spirits, if such region there were. I\nexperienced a shock of horror, then a strong thrill of grief, then a\ndesire—a necessity to see her; and I asked in what room she lay.\n“She is in Miss Temple’s room,” said the nurse.\n“May I go up and speak to her?”\n“Oh no, child! It is not likely; and now it is time for you to come in;\nyou’ll catch the fever if you stop out when the dew is falling.”\nThe nurse closed the front door; I went in by the side entrance which\nled to the schoolroom: I was just in time; it was nine o’clock, and\nMiss Miller was calling the pupils to go to bed.\nIt might be two hours later, probably near eleven, when I—not having\nbeen able to fall asleep, and deeming, from the perfect silence of the\ndormitory, that my companions were all wrapt in profound repose—rose\nsoftly, put on my frock over my night-dress, and, without shoes, crept\nfrom the apartment, and set off in quest of Miss Temple’s room. It was\nquite at the other end of the house; but I knew my way; and the light\nof the unclouded summer moon, entering here and there at passage\nwindows, enabled me to find it without difficulty. An odour of camphor\nand burnt vinegar warned me when I came near the fever room: and I\npassed its door quickly, fearful lest the nurse who sat up all night\nshould hear me. I dreaded being discovered and sent back; for I _must_\nsee Helen,—I must embrace her before she died,—I must give her one last\nkiss, exchange with her one last word.\nHaving descended a staircase, traversed a portion of the house below,\nand succeeded in opening and shutting, without noise, two doors, I\nreached another flight of steps; these I mounted, and then just\nopposite to me was Miss Temple’s room. A light shone through the\nkeyhole and from under the door; a profound stillness pervaded the\nvicinity. Coming near, I found the door slightly ajar; probably to\nadmit some fresh air into the close abode of sickness. Indisposed to\nhesitate, and full of impatient impulses—soul and senses quivering with\nkeen throes—I put it back and looked in. My eye sought Helen, and\nfeared to find death.\nClose by Miss Temple’s bed, and half covered with its white curtains,\nthere stood a little crib. I saw the outline of a form under the\nclothes, but the face was hid by the hangings: the nurse I had spoken\nto in the garden sat in an easy-chair asleep; an unsnuffed candle burnt\ndimly on the table. Miss Temple was not to be seen: I knew afterwards\nthat she had been called to a delirious patient in the fever-room. I\nadvanced; then paused by the crib side: my hand was on the curtain, but\nI preferred speaking before I withdrew it. I still recoiled at the\ndread of seeing a corpse.\n“Helen!” I whispered softly, “are you awake?”\nShe stirred herself, put back the curtain, and I saw her face, pale,\nwasted, but quite composed: she looked so little changed that my fear\nwas instantly dissipated.\n“Can it be you, Jane?” she asked, in her own gentle voice.\n“Oh!” I thought, “she is not going to die; they are mistaken: she could\nnot speak and look so calmly if she were.”\nI got on to her crib and kissed her: her forehead was cold, and her\ncheek both cold and thin, and so were her hand and wrist; but she\nsmiled as of old.\n“Why are you come here, Jane? It is past eleven o’clock: I heard it\nstrike some minutes since.”\n“I came to see you, Helen: I heard you were very ill, and I could not\nsleep till I had spoken to you.”\n“You came to bid me good-bye, then: you are just in time probably.”\n“Are you going somewhere, Helen? Are you going home?”\n“Yes; to my long home—my last home.”\n“No, no, Helen!” I stopped, distressed. While I tried to devour my\ntears, a fit of coughing seized Helen; it did not, however, wake the\nnurse; when it was over, she lay some minutes exhausted; then she\nwhispered—\n“Jane, your little feet are bare; lie down and cover yourself with my\nquilt.”\nI did so: she put her arm over me, and I nestled close to her. After a\nlong silence, she resumed, still whispering—\n“I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be\nsure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die\none day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is\ngentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me\nmuch: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss\nme. By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not\nqualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should\nhave been continually at fault.”\n“But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?”\n“I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.”\n“Where is God? What is God?”\n“My Maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created. I rely\nimplicitly on His power, and confide wholly in His goodness: I count\nthe hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to Him,\nreveal Him to me.”\n“You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as heaven, and\nthat our souls can get to it when we die?”\n“I am sure there is a future state; I believe God is good; I can resign\nmy immortal part to Him without any misgiving. God is my father; God is\nmy friend: I love Him; I believe He loves me.”\n“And shall I see you again, Helen, when I die?”\n“You will come to the same region of happiness: be received by the same\nmighty, universal Parent, no doubt, dear Jane.”\nAgain I questioned, but this time only in thought. “Where is that\nregion? Does it exist?” And I clasped my arms closer round Helen; she\nseemed dearer to me than ever; I felt as if I could not let her go; I\nlay with my face hidden on her neck. Presently she said, in the\nsweetest tone—\n“How comfortable I am! That last fit of coughing has tired me a little;\nI feel as if I could sleep: but don’t leave me, Jane; I like to have\nyou near me.”\n“I’ll stay with you, _dear_ Helen: no one shall take me away.”\n“Are you warm, darling?”\n“Yes.”\n“Good-night, Jane.”\n“Good-night, Helen.”\nShe kissed me, and I her, and we both soon slumbered.\nWhen I awoke it was day: an unusual movement roused me; I looked up; I\nwas in somebody’s arms; the nurse held me; she was carrying me through\nthe passage back to the dormitory. I was not reprimanded for leaving my\nbed; people had something else to think about; no explanation was\nafforded then to my many questions; but a day or two afterwards I\nlearned that Miss Temple, on returning to her own room at dawn, had\nfound me laid in the little crib; my face against Helen Burns’s\nshoulder, my arms round her neck. I was asleep, and Helen was—dead.\nHer grave is in Brocklebridge churchyard: for fifteen years after her\ndeath it was only covered by a grassy mound; but now a grey marble\ntablet marks the spot, inscribed with her name, and the word\n“Resurgam.”\n', 'Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant\nexistence: to the first ten years of my life I have given almost as\nmany chapters. But this is not to be a regular autobiography: I am only\nbound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some\ndegree of interest; therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost\nin silence: a few lines only are necessary to keep up the links of\nconnection.\nWhen the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation at\nLowood, it gradually disappeared from thence; but not till its\nvirulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on\nthe school. Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and by\ndegrees various facts came out which excited public indignation in a\nhigh degree. The unhealthy nature of the site; the quantity and quality\nof the children’s food; the brackish, fetid water used in its\npreparation; the pupils’ wretched clothing and accommodations—all these\nthings were discovered, and the discovery produced a result mortifying\nto Mr. Brocklehurst, but beneficial to the institution.\nSeveral wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed\nlargely for the erection of a more convenient building in a better\nsituation; new regulations were made; improvements in diet and clothing\nintroduced; the funds of the school were intrusted to the management of\na committee. Mr. Brocklehurst, who, from his wealth and family\nconnections, could not be overlooked, still retained the post of\ntreasurer; but he was aided in the discharge of his duties by gentlemen\nof rather more enlarged and sympathising minds: his office of\ninspector, too, was shared by those who knew how to combine reason with\nstrictness, comfort with economy, compassion with uprightness. The\nschool, thus improved, became in time a truly useful and noble\ninstitution. I remained an inmate of its walls, after its regeneration,\nfor eight years: six as pupil, and two as teacher; and in both\ncapacities I bear my testimony to its value and importance.\nDuring these eight years my life was uniform: but not unhappy, because\nit was not inactive. I had the means of an excellent education placed\nwithin my reach; a fondness for some of my studies, and a desire to\nexcel in all, together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers,\nespecially such as I loved, urged me on: I availed myself fully of the\nadvantages offered me. In time I rose to be the first girl of the first\nclass; then I was invested with the office of teacher; which I\ndischarged with zeal for two years: but at the end of that time I\naltered.\nMiss Temple, through all changes, had thus far continued superintendent\nof the seminary: to her instruction I owed the best part of my\nacquirements; her friendship and society had been my continual solace;\nshe had stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and, latterly,\ncompanion. At this period she married, removed with her husband (a\nclergyman, an excellent man, almost worthy of such a wife) to a distant\ncounty, and consequently was lost to me.\nFrom the day she left I was no longer the same: with her was gone every\nsettled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in some degree\na home to me. I had imbibed from her something of her nature and much\nof her habits: more harmonious thoughts: what seemed better regulated\nfeelings had become the inmates of my mind. I had given in allegiance\nto duty and order; I was quiet; I believed I was content: to the eyes\nof others, usually even to my own, I appeared a disciplined and subdued\ncharacter.\nBut destiny, in the shape of the Rev. Mr. Nasmyth, came between me and\nMiss Temple: I saw her in her travelling dress step into a post-chaise,\nshortly after the marriage ceremony; I watched the chaise mount the\nhill and disappear beyond its brow; and then retired to my own room,\nand there spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday\ngranted in honour of the occasion.\nI walked about the chamber most of the time. I imagined myself only to\nbe regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it; but when my\nreflections were concluded, and I looked up and found that the\nafternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned\non me, namely, that in the interval I had undergone a transforming\nprocess; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple—or\nrather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been\nbreathing in her vicinity—and that now I was left in my natural\nelement, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. It did not\nseem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone:\nit was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason\nfor tranquillity was no more. My world had for some years been in\nLowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I\nremembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of\nhopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had\ncourage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life\namidst its perils.\nI went to my window, opened it, and looked out. There were the two\nwings of the building; there was the garden; there were the skirts of\nLowood; there was the hilly horizon. My eye passed all other objects to\nrest on those most remote, the blue peaks; it was those I longed to\nsurmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed\nprison-ground, exile limits. I traced the white road winding round the\nbase of one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between two; how I\nlonged to follow it farther! I recalled the time when I had travelled\nthat very road in a coach; I remembered descending that hill at\ntwilight; an age seemed to have elapsed since the day which brought me\nfirst to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since. My vacations had all\nbeen spent at school: Mrs. Reed had never sent for me to Gateshead;\nneither she nor any of her family had ever been to visit me. I had had\nno communication by letter or message with the outer world:\nschool-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and\nfaces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies—such\nwas what I knew of existence. And now I felt that it was not enough; I\ntired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired\nliberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it\nseemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and\nframed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition,\ntoo, seemed swept off into vague space: “Then,” I cried, half\ndesperate, “grant me at least a new servitude!”\nHere a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs.\nI was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till\nbedtime: even then a teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me\nfrom the subject to which I longed to recur, by a prolonged effusion of\nsmall talk. How I wished sleep would silence her. It seemed as if,\ncould I but go back to the idea which had last entered my mind as I\nstood at the window, some inventive suggestion would rise for my\nrelief.\nMiss Gryce snored at last; she was a heavy Welshwoman, and till now her\nhabitual nasal strains had never been regarded by me in any other light\nthan as a nuisance; to-night I hailed the first deep notes with\nsatisfaction; I was debarrassed of interruption; my half-effaced\nthought instantly revived.\n“A new servitude! There is something in that,” I soliloquised\n(mentally, be it understood; I did not talk aloud). “I know there is,\nbecause it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words as\nLiberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but no more\nthan sounds for me; and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere waste of\ntime to listen to them. But Servitude! That must be matter of fact. Any\none may serve: I have served here eight years; now all I want is to\nserve elsewhere. Can I not get so much of my own will? Is not the thing\nfeasible? Yes—yes—the end is not so difficult; if I had only a brain\nactive enough to ferret out the means of attaining it.”\nI sat up in bed by way of arousing this said brain: it was a chilly\nnight; I covered my shoulders with a shawl, and then I proceeded _to\nthink_ again with all my might.\n“What do I want? A new place, in a new house, amongst new faces, under\nnew circumstances: I want this because it is of no use wanting anything\nbetter. How do people do to get a new place? They apply to friends, I\nsuppose: I have no friends. There are many others who have no friends,\nwho must look about for themselves and be their own helpers; and what\nis their resource?”\nI could not tell: nothing answered me; I then ordered my brain to find\na response, and quickly. It worked and worked faster: I felt the pulses\nthrob in my head and temples; but for nearly an hour it worked in\nchaos; and no result came of its efforts. Feverish with vain labour, I\ngot up and took a turn in the room; undrew the curtain, noted a star or\ntwo, shivered with cold, and again crept to bed.\nA kind fairy, in my absence, had surely dropped the required suggestion\non my pillow; for as I lay down, it came quietly and naturally to my\nmind:—“Those who want situations advertise; you must advertise in the\n_——shire Herald_.”\n“How? I know nothing about advertising.”\nReplies rose smooth and prompt now:—\n“You must enclose the advertisement and the money to pay for it under a\ncover directed to the editor of the _Herald_; you must put it, the\nfirst opportunity you have, into the post at Lowton; answers must be\naddressed to J.E., at the post-office there; you can go and inquire in\nabout a week after you send your letter, if any are come, and act\naccordingly.”\nThis scheme I went over twice, thrice; it was then digested in my mind;\nI had it in a clear practical form: I felt satisfied, and fell asleep.\nWith earliest day, I was up: I had my advertisement written, enclosed,\nand directed before the bell rang to rouse the school; it ran thus:—\n“A young lady accustomed to tuition” (had I not been a teacher two\nyears?) “is desirous of meeting with a situation in a private family\nwhere the children are under fourteen” (I thought that as I was barely\neighteen, it would not do to undertake the guidance of pupils nearer my\nown age). “She is qualified to teach the usual branches of a good\nEnglish education, together with French, Drawing, and Music” (in those\ndays, reader, this now narrow catalogue of accomplishments, would have\nbeen held tolerably comprehensive). “Address, J.E., Post-office,\nLowton, ——shire.”\nThis document remained locked in my drawer all day: after tea, I asked\nleave of the new superintendent to go to Lowton, in order to perform\nsome small commissions for myself and one or two of my fellow-teachers;\npermission was readily granted; I went. It was a walk of two miles, and\nthe evening was wet, but the days were still long; I visited a shop or\ntwo, slipped the letter into the post-office, and came back through\nheavy rain, with streaming garments, but with a relieved heart.\nThe succeeding week seemed long: it came to an end at last, however,\nlike all sublunary things, and once more, towards the close of a\npleasant autumn day, I found myself afoot on the road to Lowton. A\npicturesque track it was, by the way; lying along the side of the beck\nand through the sweetest curves of the dale: but that day I thought\nmore of the letters, that might or might not be awaiting me at the\nlittle burgh whither I was bound, than of the charms of lea and water.\nMy ostensible errand on this occasion was to get measured for a pair of\nshoes; so I discharged that business first, and when it was done, I\nstepped across the clean and quiet little street from the shoemaker’s\nto the post-office: it was kept by an old dame, who wore horn\nspectacles on her nose, and black mittens on her hands.\n“Are there any letters for J.E.?” I asked.\nShe peered at me over her spectacles, and then she opened a drawer and\nfumbled among its contents for a long time, so long that my hopes began\nto falter. At last, having held a document before her glasses for\nnearly five minutes, she presented it across the counter, accompanying\nthe act by another inquisitive and mistrustful glance—it was for J.E.\n“Is there only one?” I demanded.\n“There are no more,” said she; and I put it in my pocket and turned my\nface homeward: I could not open it then; rules obliged me to be back by\neight, and it was already half-past seven.\nVarious duties awaited me on my arrival: I had to sit with the girls\nduring their hour of study; then it was my turn to read prayers; to see\nthem to bed: afterwards I supped with the other teachers. Even when we\nfinally retired for the night, the inevitable Miss Gryce was still my\ncompanion: we had only a short end of candle in our candlestick, and I\ndreaded lest she should talk till it was all burnt out; fortunately,\nhowever, the heavy supper she had eaten produced a soporific effect:\nshe was already snoring before I had finished undressing. There still\nremained an inch of candle: I now took out my letter; the seal was an\ninitial F.; I broke it; the contents were brief.\n“If J.E., who advertised in the _——shire Herald_ of last Thursday,\npossesses the acquirements mentioned, and if she is in a position to\ngive satisfactory references as to character and competency, a\nsituation can be offered her where there is but one pupil, a little\ngirl, under ten years of age; and where the salary is thirty pounds per\nannum. J.E. is requested to send references, name, address, and all\nparticulars to the direction:—\n“Mrs. Fairfax, Thornfield, near Millcote, ——shire.”\nI examined the document long: the writing was old-fashioned and rather\nuncertain, like that of an elderly lady. This circumstance was\nsatisfactory: a private fear had haunted me, that in thus acting for\nmyself, and by my own guidance, I ran the risk of getting into some\nscrape; and, above all things, I wished the result of my endeavours to\nbe respectable, proper, _en règle_. I now felt that an elderly lady was\nno bad ingredient in the business I had on hand. Mrs. Fairfax! I saw\nher in a black gown and widow’s cap; frigid, perhaps, but not uncivil:\na model of elderly English respectability. Thornfield! that, doubtless,\nwas the name of her house: a neat orderly spot, I was sure; though I\nfailed in my efforts to conceive a correct plan of the premises.\nMillcote, ——shire; I brushed up my recollections of the map of England;\nyes, I saw it; both the shire and the town. ——shire was seventy miles\nnearer London than the remote county where I now resided: that was a\nrecommendation to me. I longed to go where there was life and movement:\nMillcote was a large manufacturing town on the banks of the A——: a busy\nplace enough, doubtless: so much the better; it would be a complete\nchange at least. Not that my fancy was much captivated by the idea of\nlong chimneys and clouds of smoke—“but,” I argued, “Thornfield will,\nprobably, be a good way from the town.”\nHere the socket of the candle dropped, and the wick went out.\nNext day new steps were to be taken; my plans could no longer be\nconfined to my own breast; I must impart them in order to achieve their\nsuccess. Having sought and obtained an audience of the superintendent\nduring the noontide recreation, I told her I had a prospect of getting\na new situation where the salary would be double what I now received\n(for at Lowood I only got £15 per annum); and requested she would break\nthe matter for me to Mr. Brocklehurst, or some of the committee, and\nascertain whether they would permit me to mention them as references.\nShe obligingly consented to act as mediatrix in the matter. The next\nday she laid the affair before Mr. Brocklehurst, who said that Mrs.\nReed must be written to, as she was my natural guardian. A note was\naccordingly addressed to that lady, who returned for answer, that “I\nmight do as I pleased: she had long relinquished all interference in my\naffairs.” This note went the round of the committee, and at last, after\nwhat appeared to me most tedious delay, formal leave was given me to\nbetter my condition if I could; and an assurance added, that as I had\nalways conducted myself well, both as teacher and pupil, at Lowood, a\ntestimonial of character and capacity, signed by the inspectors of that\ninstitution, should forthwith be furnished me.\nThis testimonial I accordingly received in about a month, forwarded a\ncopy of it to Mrs. Fairfax, and got that lady’s reply, stating that she\nwas satisfied, and fixing that day fortnight as the period for my\nassuming the post of governess in her house.\nI now busied myself in preparations: the fortnight passed rapidly. I\nhad not a very large wardrobe, though it was adequate to my wants; and\nthe last day sufficed to pack my trunk,—the same I had brought with me\neight years ago from Gateshead.\nThe box was corded, the card nailed on. In half-an-hour the carrier was\nto call for it to take it to Lowton, whither I myself was to repair at\nan early hour the next morning to meet the coach. I had brushed my\nblack stuff travelling-dress, prepared my bonnet, gloves, and muff;\nsought in all my drawers to see that no article was left behind; and\nnow having nothing more to do, I sat down and tried to rest. I could\nnot; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an\ninstant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing\nto-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to slumber in the\ninterval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being\naccomplished.\n“Miss,” said a servant who met me in the lobby, where I was wandering\nlike a troubled spirit, “a person below wishes to see you.”\n“The carrier, no doubt,” I thought, and ran downstairs without inquiry.\nI was passing the back-parlour or teachers’ sitting-room, the door of\nwhich was half open, to go to the kitchen, when some one ran out—\n“It’s her, I am sure!—I could have told her anywhere!” cried the\nindividual who stopped my progress and took my hand.\nI looked: I saw a woman attired like a well-dressed servant, matronly,\nyet still young; very good-looking, with black hair and eyes, and\nlively complexion.\n“Well, who is it?” she asked, in a voice and with a smile I half\nrecognised; “you’ve not quite forgotten me, I think, Miss Jane?”\nIn another second I was embracing and kissing her rapturously: “Bessie!\nBessie! Bessie!” that was all I said; whereat she half laughed, half\ncried, and we both went into the parlour. By the fire stood a little\nfellow of three years old, in plaid frock and trousers.\n“That is my little boy,” said Bessie directly.\n“Then you are married, Bessie?”\n“Yes; nearly five years since to Robert Leaven, the coachman; and I’ve\na little girl besides Bobby there, that I’ve christened Jane.”\n“And you don’t live at Gateshead?”\n“I live at the lodge: the old porter has left.”\n“Well, and how do they all get on? Tell me everything about them,\nBessie: but sit down first; and, Bobby, come and sit on my knee, will\nyou?” but Bobby preferred sidling over to his mother.\n“You’re not grown so very tall, Miss Jane, nor so very stout,”\ncontinued Mrs. Leaven. “I dare say they’ve not kept you too well at\nschool: Miss Reed is the head and shoulders taller than you are; and\nMiss Georgiana would make two of you in breadth.”\n“Georgiana is handsome, I suppose, Bessie?”\n“Very. She went up to London last winter with her mama, and there\neverybody admired her, and a young lord fell in love with her: but his\nrelations were against the match; and—what do you think?—he and Miss\nGeorgiana made it up to run away; but they were found out and stopped.\nIt was Miss Reed that found them out: I believe she was envious; and\nnow she and her sister lead a cat and dog life together; they are\nalways quarrelling—”\n“Well, and what of John Reed?”\n“Oh, he is not doing so well as his mama could wish. He went to\ncollege, and he got—plucked, I think they call it: and then his uncles\nwanted him to be a barrister, and study the law: but he is such a\ndissipated young man, they will never make much of him, I think.”\n“What does he look like?”\n“He is very tall: some people call him a fine-looking young man; but he\nhas such thick lips.”\n“And Mrs. Reed?”\n“Missis looks stout and well enough in the face, but I think she’s not\nquite easy in her mind: Mr. John’s conduct does not please her—he\nspends a deal of money.”\n“Did she send you here, Bessie?”\n“No, indeed: but I have long wanted to see you, and when I heard that\nthere had been a letter from you, and that you were going to another\npart of the country, I thought I’d just set off, and get a look at you\nbefore you were quite out of my reach.”\n“I am afraid you are disappointed in me, Bessie.” I said this laughing:\nI perceived that Bessie’s glance, though it expressed regard, did in no\nshape denote admiration.\n“No, Miss Jane, not exactly: you are genteel enough; you look like a\nlady, and it is as much as ever I expected of you: you were no beauty\nas a child.”\nI smiled at Bessie’s frank answer: I felt that it was correct, but I\nconfess I was not quite indifferent to its import: at eighteen most\npeople wish to please, and the conviction that they have not an\nexterior likely to second that desire brings anything but\ngratification.\n“I dare say you are clever, though,” continued Bessie, by way of\nsolace. “What can you do? Can you play on the piano?”\n“A little.”\nThere was one in the room; Bessie went and opened it, and then asked me\nto sit down and give her a tune: I played a waltz or two, and she was\ncharmed.\n“The Miss Reeds could not play as well!” said she exultingly. “I always\nsaid you would surpass them in learning: and can you draw?”\n“That is one of my paintings over the chimney-piece.” It was a\nlandscape in water colours, of which I had made a present to the\nsuperintendent, in acknowledgment of her obliging mediation with the\ncommittee on my behalf, and which she had framed and glazed.\n“Well, that is beautiful, Miss Jane! It is as fine a picture as any\nMiss Reed’s drawing-master could paint, let alone the young ladies\nthemselves, who could not come near it: and have you learnt French?”\n“Yes, Bessie, I can both read it and speak it.”\n“And you can work on muslin and canvas?”\n“I can.”\n“Oh, you are quite a lady, Miss Jane! I knew you would be: you will get\non whether your relations notice you or not. There was something I\nwanted to ask you. Have you ever heard anything from your father’s\nkinsfolk, the Eyres?”\n“Never in my life.”\n“Well, you know Missis always said they were poor and quite despicable:\nand they may be poor; but I believe they are as much gentry as the\nReeds are; for one day, nearly seven years ago, a Mr. Eyre came to\nGateshead and wanted to see you; Missis said you were at school fifty\nmiles off; he seemed so much disappointed, for he could not stay: he\nwas going on a voyage to a foreign country, and the ship was to sail\nfrom London in a day or two. He looked quite a gentleman, and I believe\nhe was your father’s brother.”\n“What foreign country was he going to, Bessie?”\n“An island thousands of miles off, where they make wine—the butler did\ntell me—”\n“Madeira?” I suggested.\n“Yes, that is it—that is the very word.”\n“So he went?”\n“Yes; he did not stay many minutes in the house: Missis was very high\nwith him; she called him afterwards a ‘sneaking tradesman.’ My Robert\nbelieves he was a wine-merchant.”\n“Very likely,” I returned; “or perhaps clerk or agent to a\nwine-merchant.”\nBessie and I conversed about old times an hour longer, and then she was\nobliged to leave me: I saw her again for a few minutes the next morning\nat Lowton, while I was waiting for the coach. We parted finally at the\ndoor of the Brocklehurst Arms there: each went her separate way; she\nset off for the brow of Lowood Fell to meet the conveyance which was to\ntake her back to Gateshead, I mounted the vehicle which was to bear me\nto new duties and a new life in the unknown environs of Millcote.\n', 'A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play; and\nwhen I draw up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a\nroom in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large figured papering on\nthe walls as inn rooms have; such a carpet, such furniture, such\nornaments on the mantelpiece, such prints, including a portrait of\nGeorge the Third, and another of the Prince of Wales, and a\nrepresentation of the death of Wolfe. All this is visible to you by the\nlight of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, and by that of an\nexcellent fire, near which I sit in my cloak and bonnet; my muff and\numbrella lie on the table, and I am warming away the numbness and chill\ncontracted by sixteen hours’ exposure to the rawness of an October day:\nI left Lowton at four o’clock A.M., and the Millcote town clock is now\njust striking eight.\nReader, though I look comfortably accommodated, I am not very tranquil\nin my mind. I thought when the coach stopped here there would be some\none to meet me; I looked anxiously round as I descended the wooden\nsteps the “boots” placed for my convenience, expecting to hear my name\npronounced, and to see some description of carriage waiting to convey\nme to Thornfield. Nothing of the sort was visible; and when I asked a\nwaiter if any one had been to inquire after a Miss Eyre, I was answered\nin the negative: so I had no resource but to request to be shown into a\nprivate room: and here I am waiting, while all sorts of doubts and\nfears are troubling my thoughts.\nIt is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself\nquite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain\nwhether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by\nmany impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of\nadventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then\nthe throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became predominant when\nhalf-an-hour elapsed and still I was alone. I bethought myself to ring\nthe bell.\n“Is there a place in this neighbourhood called Thornfield?” I asked of\nthe waiter who answered the summons.\n“Thornfield? I don’t know, ma’am; I’ll inquire at the bar.” He\nvanished, but reappeared instantly—\n“Is your name Eyre, Miss?”\n“Yes.”\n“Person here waiting for you.”\nI jumped up, took my muff and umbrella, and hastened into the\ninn-passage: a man was standing by the open door, and in the lamp-lit\nstreet I dimly saw a one-horse conveyance.\n“This will be your luggage, I suppose?” said the man rather abruptly\nwhen he saw me, pointing to my trunk in the passage.\n“Yes.” He hoisted it on to the vehicle, which was a sort of car, and\nthen I got in; before he shut me up, I asked him how far it was to\nThornfield.\n“A matter of six miles.”\n“How long shall we be before we get there?”\n“Happen an hour and a half.”\nHe fastened the car door, climbed to his own seat outside, and we set\noff. Our progress was leisurely, and gave me ample time to reflect; I\nwas content to be at length so near the end of my journey; and as I\nleaned back in the comfortable though not elegant conveyance, I\nmeditated much at my ease.\n“I suppose,” thought I, “judging from the plainness of the servant and\ncarriage, Mrs. Fairfax is not a very dashing person: so much the\nbetter; I never lived amongst fine people but once, and I was very\nmiserable with them. I wonder if she lives alone except this little\ngirl; if so, and if she is in any degree amiable, I shall surely be\nable to get on with her; I will do my best; it is a pity that doing\none’s best does not always answer. At Lowood, indeed, I took that\nresolution, kept it, and succeeded in pleasing; but with Mrs. Reed, I\nremember my best was always spurned with scorn. I pray God Mrs. Fairfax\nmay not turn out a second Mrs. Reed; but if she does, I am not bound to\nstay with her! let the worst come to the worst, I can advertise again.\nHow far are we on our road now, I wonder?”\nI let down the window and looked out; Millcote was behind us; judging\nby the number of its lights, it seemed a place of considerable\nmagnitude, much larger than Lowton. We were now, as far as I could see,\non a sort of common; but there were houses scattered all over the\ndistrict; I felt we were in a different region to Lowood, more\npopulous, less picturesque; more stirring, less romantic.\nThe roads were heavy, the night misty; my conductor let his horse walk\nall the way, and the hour and a half extended, I verily believe, to two\nhours; at last he turned in his seat and said—\n“You’re noan so far fro’ Thornfield now.”\nAgain I looked out: we were passing a church; I saw its low broad tower\nagainst the sky, and its bell was tolling a quarter; I saw a narrow\ngalaxy of lights too, on a hillside, marking a village or hamlet. About\nten minutes after, the driver got down and opened a pair of gates: we\npassed through, and they clashed to behind us. We now slowly ascended a\ndrive, and came upon the long front of a house: candlelight gleamed\nfrom one curtained bow-window; all the rest were dark. The car stopped\nat the front door; it was opened by a maid-servant; I alighted and went\nin.\n“Will you walk this way, ma’am?” said the girl; and I followed her\nacross a square hall with high doors all round: she ushered me into a\nroom whose double illumination of fire and candle at first dazzled me,\ncontrasting as it did with the darkness to which my eyes had been for\ntwo hours inured; when I could see, however, a cosy and agreeable\npicture presented itself to my view.\nA snug small room; a round table by a cheerful fire; an arm-chair\nhigh-backed and old-fashioned, wherein sat the neatest imaginable\nlittle elderly lady, in widow’s cap, black silk gown, and snowy muslin\napron; exactly like what I had fancied Mrs. Fairfax, only less stately\nand milder looking. She was occupied in knitting; a large cat sat\ndemurely at her feet; nothing in short was wanting to complete the\nbeau-ideal of domestic comfort. A more reassuring introduction for a\nnew governess could scarcely be conceived; there was no grandeur to\noverwhelm, no stateliness to embarrass; and then, as I entered, the old\nlady got up and promptly and kindly came forward to meet me.\n“How do you do, my dear? I am afraid you have had a tedious ride; John\ndrives so slowly; you must be cold, come to the fire.”\n“Mrs. Fairfax, I suppose?” said I.\n“Yes, you are right: do sit down.”\nShe conducted me to her own chair, and then began to remove my shawl\nand untie my bonnet-strings; I begged she would not give herself so\nmuch trouble.\n“Oh, it is no trouble; I dare say your own hands are almost numbed with\ncold. Leah, make a little hot negus and cut a sandwich or two: here are\nthe keys of the storeroom.”\nAnd she produced from her pocket a most housewifely bunch of keys, and\ndelivered them to the servant.\n“Now, then, draw nearer to the fire,” she continued. “You’ve brought\nyour luggage with you, haven’t you, my dear?”\n“Yes, ma’am.”\n“I’ll see it carried into your room,” she said, and bustled out.\n“She treats me like a visitor,” thought I. “I little expected such a\nreception; I anticipated only coldness and stiffness: this is not like\nwhat I have heard of the treatment of governesses; but I must not exult\ntoo soon.”\nShe returned; with her own hands cleared her knitting apparatus and a\nbook or two from the table, to make room for the tray which Leah now\nbrought, and then herself handed me the refreshments. I felt rather\nconfused at being the object of more attention than I had ever before\nreceived, and, that too, shown by my employer and superior; but as she\ndid not herself seem to consider she was doing anything out of her\nplace, I thought it better to take her civilities quietly.\n“Shall I have the pleasure of seeing Miss Fairfax to-night?” I asked,\nwhen I had partaken of what she offered me.\n“What did you say, my dear? I am a little deaf,” returned the good\nlady, approaching her ear to my mouth.\nI repeated the question more distinctly.\n“Miss Fairfax? Oh, you mean Miss Varens! Varens is the name of your\nfuture pupil.”\n“Indeed! Then she is not your daughter?”\n“No,—I have no family.”\nI should have followed up my first inquiry, by asking in what way Miss\nVarens was connected with her; but I recollected it was not polite to\nask too many questions: besides, I was sure to hear in time.\n“I am so glad,” she continued, as she sat down opposite to me, and took\nthe cat on her knee; “I am so glad you are come; it will be quite\npleasant living here now with a companion. To be sure it is pleasant at\nany time; for Thornfield is a fine old hall, rather neglected of late\nyears perhaps, but still it is a respectable place; yet you know in\nwinter-time one feels dreary quite alone in the best quarters. I say\nalone—Leah is a nice girl to be sure, and John and his wife are very\ndecent people; but then you see they are only servants, and one can’t\nconverse with them on terms of equality: one must keep them at due\ndistance, for fear of losing one’s authority. I’m sure last winter (it\nwas a very severe one, if you recollect, and when it did not snow, it\nrained and blew), not a creature but the butcher and postman came to\nthe house, from November till February; and I really got quite\nmelancholy with sitting night after night alone; I had Leah in to read\nto me sometimes; but I don’t think the poor girl liked the task much:\nshe felt it confining. In spring and summer one got on better: sunshine\nand long days make such a difference; and then, just at the\ncommencement of this autumn, little Adela Varens came and her nurse: a\nchild makes a house alive all at once; and now you are here I shall be\nquite gay.”\nMy heart really warmed to the worthy lady as I heard her talk; and I\ndrew my chair a little nearer to her, and expressed my sincere wish\nthat she might find my company as agreeable as she anticipated.\n“But I’ll not keep you sitting up late to-night,” said she; “it is on\nthe stroke of twelve now, and you have been travelling all day: you\nmust feel tired. If you have got your feet well warmed, I’ll show you\nyour bedroom. I’ve had the room next to mine prepared for you; it is\nonly a small apartment, but I thought you would like it better than one\nof the large front chambers: to be sure they have finer furniture, but\nthey are so dreary and solitary, I never sleep in them myself.”\nI thanked her for her considerate choice, and as I really felt fatigued\nwith my long journey, expressed my readiness to retire. She took her\ncandle, and I followed her from the room. First she went to see if the\nhall-door was fastened; having taken the key from the lock, she led the\nway upstairs. The steps and banisters were of oak; the staircase window\nwas high and latticed; both it and the long gallery into which the\nbedroom doors opened looked as if they belonged to a church rather than\na house. A very chill and vault-like air pervaded the stairs and\ngallery, suggesting cheerless ideas of space and solitude; and I was\nglad, when finally ushered into my chamber, to find it of small\ndimensions, and furnished in ordinary, modern style.\nWhen Mrs. Fairfax had bidden me a kind good-night, and I had fastened\nmy door, gazed leisurely round, and in some measure effaced the eerie\nimpression made by that wide hall, that dark and spacious staircase,\nand that long, cold gallery, by the livelier aspect of my little room,\nI remembered that, after a day of bodily fatigue and mental anxiety, I\nwas now at last in safe haven. The impulse of gratitude swelled my\nheart, and I knelt down at the bedside, and offered up thanks where\nthanks were due; not forgetting, ere I rose, to implore aid on my\nfurther path, and the power of meriting the kindness which seemed so\nfrankly offered me before it was earned. My couch had no thorns in it\nthat night; my solitary room no fears. At once weary and content, I\nslept soon and soundly: when I awoke it was broad day.\nThe chamber looked such a bright little place to me as the sun shone in\nbetween the gay blue chintz window curtains, showing papered walls and\na carpeted floor, so unlike the bare planks and stained plaster of\nLowood, that my spirits rose at the view. Externals have a great effect\non the young: I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me,\none that was to have its flowers and pleasures, as well as its thorns\nand toils. My faculties, roused by the change of scene, the new field\noffered to hope, seemed all astir. I cannot precisely define what they\nexpected, but it was something pleasant: not perhaps that day or that\nmonth, but at an indefinite future period.\nI rose; I dressed myself with care: obliged to be plain—for I had no\narticle of attire that was not made with extreme simplicity—I was still\nby nature solicitous to be neat. It was not my habit to be disregardful\nof appearance or careless of the impression I made: on the contrary, I\never wished to look as well as I could, and to please as much as my\nwant of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted that I was not\nhandsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and\nsmall cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed\nin figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and\nhad features so irregular and so marked. And why had I these\naspirations and these regrets? It would be difficult to say: I could\nnot then distinctly say it to myself; yet I had a reason, and a\nlogical, natural reason too. However, when I had brushed my hair very\nsmooth, and put on my black frock—which, Quakerlike as it was, at least\nhad the merit of fitting to a nicety—and adjusted my clean white\ntucker, I thought I should do respectably enough to appear before Mrs.\nFairfax, and that my new pupil would not at least recoil from me with\nantipathy. Having opened my chamber window, and seen that I left all\nthings straight and neat on the toilet table, I ventured forth.\nTraversing the long and matted gallery, I descended the slippery steps\nof oak; then I gained the hall: I halted there a minute; I looked at\nsome pictures on the walls (one, I remember, represented a grim man in\na cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace), at\na bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was\nof oak curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing.\nEverything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I was so\nlittle accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was half of glass,\nstood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine autumn morning;\nthe early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green\nfields; advancing on to the lawn, I looked up and surveyed the front of\nthe mansion. It was three storeys high, of proportions not vast, though\nconsiderable: a gentleman’s manor-house, not a nobleman’s seat:\nbattlements round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front\nstood out well from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants\nwere now on the wing: they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in\na great meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence, and\nwhere an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong, knotty, and broad as\noaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion’s designation.\nFarther off were hills: not so lofty as those round Lowood, nor so\ncraggy, nor so like barriers of separation from the living world; but\nyet quiet and lonely hills enough, and seeming to embrace Thornfield\nwith a seclusion I had not expected to find existent so near the\nstirring locality of Millcote. A little hamlet, whose roofs were blent\nwith trees, straggled up the side of one of these hills; the church of\nthe district stood nearer Thornfield: its old tower-top looked over a\nknoll between the house and gates.\nI was yet enjoying the calm prospect and pleasant fresh air, yet\nlistening with delight to the cawing of the rooks, yet surveying the\nwide, hoary front of the hall, and thinking what a great place it was\nfor one lonely little dame like Mrs. Fairfax to inhabit, when that lady\nappeared at the door.\n“What! out already?” said she. “I see you are an early riser.” I went\nup to her, and was received with an affable kiss and shake of the hand.\n“How do you like Thornfield?” she asked. I told her I liked it very\nmuch.\n“Yes,” she said, “it is a pretty place; but I fear it will be getting\nout of order, unless Mr. Rochester should take it into his head to come\nand reside here permanently; or, at least, visit it rather oftener:\ngreat houses and fine grounds require the presence of the proprietor.”\n“Mr. Rochester!” I exclaimed. “Who is he?”\n“The owner of Thornfield,” she responded quietly. “Did you not know he\nwas called Rochester?”\nOf course I did not—I had never heard of him before; but the old lady\nseemed to regard his existence as a universally understood fact, with\nwhich everybody must be acquainted by instinct.\n“I thought,” I continued, “Thornfield belonged to you.”\n“To me? Bless you, child; what an idea! To me! I am only the\nhousekeeper—the manager. To be sure I am distantly related to the\nRochesters by the mother’s side, or at least my husband was; he was a\nclergyman, incumbent of Hay—that little village yonder on the hill—and\nthat church near the gates was his. The present Mr. Rochester’s mother\nwas a Fairfax, and second cousin to my husband: but I never presume on\nthe connection—in fact, it is nothing to me; I consider myself quite in\nthe light of an ordinary housekeeper: my employer is always civil, and\nI expect nothing more.”\n“And the little girl—my pupil!”\n“She is Mr. Rochester’s ward; he commissioned me to find a governess\nfor her. He intended to have her brought up in ——shire, I believe. Here\nshe comes, with her ‘bonne,’ as she calls her nurse.” The enigma then\nwas explained: this affable and kind little widow was no great dame;\nbut a dependent like myself. I did not like her the worse for that; on\nthe contrary, I felt better pleased than ever. The equality between her\nand me was real; not the mere result of condescension on her part: so\nmuch the better—my position was all the freer.\nAs I was meditating on this discovery, a little girl, followed by her\nattendant, came running up the lawn. I looked at my pupil, who did not\nat first appear to notice me: she was quite a child, perhaps seven or\neight years old, slightly built, with a pale, small-featured face, and\na redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist.\n“Good morning, Miss Adela,” said Mrs. Fairfax. “Come and speak to the\nlady who is to teach you, and to make you a clever woman some day.” She\napproached.\n“C’est là ma gouvernante!” said she, pointing to me, and addressing her\nnurse; who answered—\n“Mais oui, certainement.”\n“Are they foreigners?” I inquired, amazed at hearing the French\nlanguage.\n“The nurse is a foreigner, and Adela was born on the Continent; and, I\nbelieve, never left it till within six months ago. When she first came\nhere she could speak no English; now she can make shift to talk it a\nlittle: I don’t understand her, she mixes it so with French; but you\nwill make out her meaning very well, I dare say.”\nFortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French\nlady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame\nPierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last seven\nyears, learnt a portion of French by heart daily—applying myself to\ntake pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the\npronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of\nreadiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be\nmuch at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela. She came and shook hands with\nme when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to\nbreakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue: she\nreplied briefly at first, but after we were seated at the table, and\nshe had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she\nsuddenly commenced chattering fluently.\n“Ah!” cried she, in French, “you speak my language as well as Mr.\nRochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Sophie.\nShe will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame Fairfax is all\nEnglish. Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great\nship with a chimney that smoked—how it did smoke!—and I was sick, and\nso was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester lay down on a\nsofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Sophie and I had little\nbeds in another place. I nearly fell out of mine; it was like a shelf.\nAnd Mademoiselle—what is your name?”\n“Eyre—Jane Eyre.”\n“Aire? Bah! I cannot say it. Well, our ship stopped in the morning,\nbefore it was quite daylight, at a great city—a huge city, with very\ndark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came\nfrom; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the\nland, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us\nto a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an\nhotel. We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie used to walk every\nday in a great green place full of trees, called the Park; and there\nwere many children there besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in\nit, that I fed with crumbs.”\n“Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?” asked Mrs. Fairfax.\nI understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent\ntongue of Madame Pierrot.\n“I wish,” continued the good lady, “you would ask her a question or two\nabout her parents: I wonder if she remembers them?”\n“Adèle,” I inquired, “with whom did you live when you were in that\npretty clean town you spoke of?”\n“I lived long ago with mama; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin. Mama\nused to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses. A great many\ngentlemen and ladies came to see mama, and I used to dance before them,\nor to sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it. Shall I let you\nhear me sing now?”\nShe had finished her breakfast, so I permitted her to give a specimen\nof her accomplishments. Descending from her chair, she came and placed\nherself on my knee; then, folding her little hands demurely before her,\nshaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the ceiling, she\ncommenced singing a song from some opera. It was the strain of a\nforsaken lady, who, after bewailing the perfidy of her lover, calls\npride to her aid; desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest\njewels and richest robes, and resolves to meet the false one that night\nat a ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her demeanour, how little\nhis desertion has affected her.\nThe subject seemed strangely chosen for an infant singer; but I suppose\nthe point of the exhibition lay in hearing the notes of love and\njealousy warbled with the lisp of childhood; and in very bad taste that\npoint was: at least I thought so.\nAdèle sang the canzonette tunefully enough, and with the _naïveté_ of\nher age. This achieved, she jumped from my knee and said, “Now,\nMademoiselle, I will repeat you some poetry.”\nAssuming an attitude, she began, “La Ligue des Rats: fable de La\nFontaine.” She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to\npunctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of voice and an appropriateness\nof gesture, very unusual indeed at her age, and which proved she had\nbeen carefully trained.\n“Was it your mama who taught you that piece?” I asked.\n“Yes, and she just used to say it in this way: ‘Qu’avez vous donc? lui\ndit un de ces rats; parlez!’ She made me lift my hand—so—to remind me\nto raise my voice at the question. Now shall I dance for you?”\n“No, that will do: but after your mama went to the Holy Virgin, as you\nsay, with whom did you live then?”\n“With Madame Frédéric and her husband: she took care of me, but she is\nnothing related to me. I think she is poor, for she had not so fine a\nhouse as mama. I was not long there. Mr. Rochester asked me if I would\nlike to go and live with him in England, and I said yes; for I knew Mr.\nRochester before I knew Madame Frédéric, and he was always kind to me\nand gave me pretty dresses and toys: but you see he has not kept his\nword, for he has brought me to England, and now he is gone back again\nhimself, and I never see him.”\nAfter breakfast, Adèle and I withdrew to the library, which room, it\nappears, Mr. Rochester had directed should be used as the schoolroom.\nMost of the books were locked up behind glass doors; but there was one\nbookcase left open containing everything that could be needed in the\nway of elementary works, and several volumes of light literature,\npoetry, biography, travels, a few romances, &c. I suppose he had\nconsidered that these were all the governess would require for her\nprivate perusal; and, indeed, they contented me amply for the present;\ncompared with the scanty pickings I had now and then been able to glean\nat Lowood, they seemed to offer an abundant harvest of entertainment\nand information. In this room, too, there was a cabinet piano, quite\nnew and of superior tone; also an easel for painting and a pair of\nglobes.\nI found my pupil sufficiently docile, though disinclined to apply: she\nhad not been used to regular occupation of any kind. I felt it would be\ninjudicious to confine her too much at first; so, when I had talked to\nher a great deal, and got her to learn a little, and when the morning\nhad advanced to noon, I allowed her to return to her nurse. I then\nproposed to occupy myself till dinner-time in drawing some little\nsketches for her use.\nAs I was going upstairs to fetch my portfolio and pencils, Mrs. Fairfax\ncalled to me: “Your morning school-hours are over now, I suppose,” said\nshe. She was in a room the folding-doors of which stood open: I went in\nwhen she addressed me. It was a large, stately apartment, with purple\nchairs and curtains, a Turkey carpet, walnut-panelled walls, one vast\nwindow rich in stained glass, and a lofty ceiling, nobly moulded. Mrs.\nFairfax was dusting some vases of fine purple spar, which stood on a\nsideboard.\n“What a beautiful room!” I exclaimed, as I looked round; for I had\nnever before seen any half so imposing.\n“Yes; this is the dining-room. I have just opened the window, to let in\na little air and sunshine; for everything gets so damp in apartments\nthat are seldom inhabited; the drawing-room yonder feels like a vault.”\nShe pointed to a wide arch corresponding to the window, and hung like\nit with a Tyrian-dyed curtain, now looped up. Mounting to it by two\nbroad steps, and looking through, I thought I caught a glimpse of a\nfairy place, so bright to my novice-eyes appeared the view beyond. Yet\nit was merely a very pretty drawing-room, and within it a boudoir, both\nspread with white carpets, on which seemed laid brilliant garlands of\nflowers; both ceiled with snowy mouldings of white grapes and\nvine-leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast crimson couches and\nottomans; while the ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of\nsparkling Bohemian glass, ruby red; and between the windows large\nmirrors repeated the general blending of snow and fire.\n“In what order you keep these rooms, Mrs. Fairfax!” said I. “No dust,\nno canvas coverings: except that the air feels chilly, one would think\nthey were inhabited daily.”\n“Why, Miss Eyre, though Mr. Rochester’s visits here are rare, they are\nalways sudden and unexpected; and as I observed that it put him out to\nfind everything swathed up, and to have a bustle of arrangement on his\narrival, I thought it best to keep the rooms in readiness.”\n“Is Mr. Rochester an exacting, fastidious sort of man?”\n“Not particularly so; but he has a gentleman’s tastes and habits, and\nhe expects to have things managed in conformity to them.”\n“Do you like him? Is he generally liked?”\n“Oh, yes; the family have always been respected here. Almost all the\nland in this neighbourhood, as far as you can see, has belonged to the\nRochesters time out of mind.”\n“Well, but, leaving his land out of the question, do you like him? Is\nhe liked for himself?”\n“_I_ have no cause to do otherwise than like him; and I believe he is\nconsidered a just and liberal landlord by his tenants: but he has never\nlived much amongst them.”\n“But has he no peculiarities? What, in short, is his character?”\n“Oh! his character is unimpeachable, I suppose. He is rather peculiar,\nperhaps: he has travelled a great deal, and seen a great deal of the\nworld, I should think. I dare say he is clever, but I never had much\nconversation with him.”\n“In what way is he peculiar?”\n“I don’t know—it is not easy to describe—nothing striking, but you feel\nit when he speaks to you; you cannot be always sure whether he is in\njest or earnest, whether he is pleased or the contrary; you don’t\nthoroughly understand him, in short—at least, I don’t: but it is of no\nconsequence, he is a very good master.”\nThis was all the account I got from Mrs. Fairfax of her employer and\nmine. There are people who seem to have no notion of sketching a\ncharacter, or observing and describing salient points, either in\npersons or things: the good lady evidently belonged to this class; my\nqueries puzzled, but did not draw her out. Mr. Rochester was Mr.\nRochester in her eyes; a gentleman, a landed proprietor—nothing more:\nshe inquired and searched no further, and evidently wondered at my wish\nto gain a more definite notion of his identity.\nWhen we left the dining-room, she proposed to show me over the rest of\nthe house; and I followed her upstairs and downstairs, admiring as I\nwent; for all was well arranged and handsome. The large front chambers\nI thought especially grand: and some of the third-storey rooms, though\ndark and low, were interesting from their air of antiquity. The\nfurniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to\ntime been removed here, as fashions changed: and the imperfect light\nentering by their narrow casement showed bedsteads of a hundred years\nold; chests in oak or walnut, looking, with their strange carvings of\npalm branches and cherubs’ heads, like types of the Hebrew ark; rows of\nvenerable chairs, high-backed and narrow; stools still more antiquated,\non whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced\nembroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had been\ncoffin-dust. All these relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield\nHall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine of memory. I liked the\nhush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by\nno means coveted a night’s repose on one of those wide and heavy beds:\nshut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought\nold English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of\nstrange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings,—all\nwhich would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of\nmoonlight.\n“Do the servants sleep in these rooms?” I asked.\n“No; they occupy a range of smaller apartments to the back; no one ever\nsleeps here: one would almost say that, if there were a ghost at\nThornfield Hall, this would be its haunt.”\n“So I think: you have no ghost, then?”\n“None that I ever heard of,” returned Mrs. Fairfax, smiling.\n“Nor any traditions of one? no legends or ghost stories?”\n“I believe not. And yet it is said the Rochesters have been rather a\nviolent than a quiet race in their time: perhaps, though, that is the\nreason they rest tranquilly in their graves now.”\n“Yes—‘after life’s fitful fever they sleep well,’” I muttered. “Where\nare you going now, Mrs. Fairfax?” for she was moving away.\n“On to the leads; will you come and see the view from thence?” I\nfollowed still, up a very narrow staircase to the attics, and thence by\na ladder and through a trap-door to the roof of the hall. I was now on\na level with the crow colony, and could see into their nests. Leaning\nover the battlements and looking far down, I surveyed the grounds laid\nout like a map: the bright and velvet lawn closely girdling the grey\nbase of the mansion; the field, wide as a park, dotted with its ancient\ntimber; the wood, dun and sere, divided by a path visibly overgrown,\ngreener with moss than the trees were with foliage; the church at the\ngates, the road, the tranquil hills, all reposing in the autumn day’s\nsun; the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with\npearly white. No feature in the scene was extraordinary, but all was\npleasing. When I turned from it and repassed the trap-door, I could\nscarcely see my way down the ladder; the attic seemed black as a vault\ncompared with that arch of blue air to which I had been looking up, and\nto that sunlit scene of grove, pasture, and green hill, of which the\nhall was the centre, and over which I had been gazing with delight.\nMrs. Fairfax stayed behind a moment to fasten the trap-door; I, by dint\nof groping, found the outlet from the attic, and proceeded to descend\nthe narrow garret staircase. I lingered in the long passage to which\nthis led, separating the front and back rooms of the third storey:\nnarrow, low, and dim, with only one little window at the far end, and\nlooking, with its two rows of small black doors all shut, like a\ncorridor in some Bluebeard’s castle.\nWhile I paced softly on, the last sound I expected to hear in so still\na region, a laugh, struck my ear. It was a curious laugh; distinct,\nformal, mirthless. I stopped: the sound ceased, only for an instant; it\nbegan again, louder: for at first, though distinct, it was very low. It\npassed off in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every\nlonely chamber; though it originated but in one, and I could have\npointed out the door whence the accents issued.\n“Mrs. Fairfax!” I called out: for I now heard her descending the great\nstairs. “Did you hear that loud laugh? Who is it?”\n“Some of the servants, very likely,” she answered: “perhaps Grace\nPoole.”\n“Did you hear it?” I again inquired.\n“Yes, plainly: I often hear her: she sews in one of these rooms.\nSometimes Leah is with her; they are frequently noisy together.”\nThe laugh was repeated in its low, syllabic tone, and terminated in an\nodd murmur.\n“Grace!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax.\nI really did not expect any Grace to answer; for the laugh was as\ntragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it\nwas high noon, and that no circumstance of ghostliness accompanied the\ncurious cachinnation; but that neither scene nor season favoured fear,\nI should have been superstitiously afraid. However, the event showed me\nI was a fool for entertaining a sense even of surprise.\nThe door nearest me opened, and a servant came out,—a woman of between\nthirty and forty; a set, square-made figure, red-haired, and with a\nhard, plain face: any apparition less romantic or less ghostly could\nscarcely be conceived.\n“Too much noise, Grace,” said Mrs. Fairfax. “Remember directions!”\nGrace curtseyed silently and went in.\n“She is a person we have to sew and assist Leah in her housemaid’s\nwork,” continued the widow; “not altogether unobjectionable in some\npoints, but she does well enough. By-the-bye, how have you got on with\nyour new pupil this morning?”\nThe conversation, thus turned on Adèle, continued till we reached the\nlight and cheerful region below. Adèle came running to meet us in the\nhall, exclaiming—\n“Mesdames, vous êtes servies!” adding, “J’ai bien faim, moi!”\nWe found dinner ready, and waiting for us in Mrs. Fairfax’s room.\n', 'The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction to\nThornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer\nacquaintance with the place and its inmates. Mrs. Fairfax turned out to\nbe what she appeared, a placid-tempered, kind-natured woman, of\ncompetent education and average intelligence. My pupil was a lively\nchild, who had been spoilt and indulged, and therefore was sometimes\nwayward; but as she was committed entirely to my care, and no\ninjudicious interference from any quarter ever thwarted my plans for\nher improvement, she soon forgot her little freaks, and became obedient\nand teachable. She had no great talents, no marked traits of character,\nno peculiar development of feeling or taste which raised her one inch\nabove the ordinary level of childhood; but neither had she any\ndeficiency or vice which sunk her below it. She made reasonable\nprogress, entertained for me a vivacious, though perhaps not very\nprofound, affection; and by her simplicity, gay prattle, and efforts to\nplease, inspired me, in return, with a degree of attachment sufficient\nto make us both content in each other’s society.\nThis, _par parenthèse_, will be thought cool language by persons who\nentertain solemn doctrines about the angelic nature of children, and\nthe duty of those charged with their education to conceive for them an\nidolatrous devotion: but I am not writing to flatter parental egotism,\nto echo cant, or prop up humbug; I am merely telling the truth. I felt\na conscientious solicitude for Adèle’s welfare and progress, and a\nquiet liking for her little self: just as I cherished towards Mrs.\nFairfax a thankfulness for her kindness, and a pleasure in her society\nproportionate to the tranquil regard she had for me, and the moderation\nof her mind and character.\nAnybody may blame me who likes, when I add further, that, now and then,\nwhen I took a walk by myself in the grounds; when I went down to the\ngates and looked through them along the road; or when, while Adèle\nplayed with her nurse, and Mrs. Fairfax made jellies in the storeroom,\nI climbed the three staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and\nhaving reached the leads, looked out afar over sequestered field and\nhill, and along dim sky-line—that then I longed for a power of vision\nwhich might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world,\ntowns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen—that then I\ndesired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of\nintercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character,\nthan was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax,\nand what was good in Adèle; but I believed in the existence of other\nand more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to\nbehold.\nWho blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I\ncould not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to\npain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of\nthe third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and\nsolitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever\nbright visions rose before it—and, certainly, they were many and\nglowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement, which,\nwhile it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of\nall, to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended—a tale my\nimagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of\nincident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual\nexistence.\nIt is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with\ntranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they\ncannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and\nmillions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many\nrebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life\nwhich people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but\nwomen feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties,\nand a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they\nsuffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely\nas men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged\nfellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making\npuddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and\nembroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them,\nif they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced\nnecessary for their sex.\nWhen thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh: the same\npeal, the same low, slow ha! ha! which, when first heard, had thrilled\nme: I heard, too, her eccentric murmurs; stranger than her laugh. There\nwere days when she was quite silent; but there were others when I could\nnot account for the sounds she made. Sometimes I saw her: she would\ncome out of her room with a basin, or a plate, or a tray in her hand,\ngo down to the kitchen and shortly return, generally (oh, romantic\nreader, forgive me for telling the plain truth!) bearing a pot of\nporter. Her appearance always acted as a damper to the curiosity raised\nby her oral oddities: hard-featured and staid, she had no point to\nwhich interest could attach. I made some attempts to draw her into\nconversation, but she seemed a person of few words: a monosyllabic\nreply usually cut short every effort of that sort.\nThe other members of the household, viz., John and his wife, Leah the\nhousemaid, and Sophie the French nurse, were decent people; but in no\nrespect remarkable; with Sophie I used to talk French, and sometimes I\nasked her questions about her native country; but she was not of a\ndescriptive or narrative turn, and generally gave such vapid and\nconfused answers as were calculated rather to check than encourage\ninquiry.\nOctober, November, December passed away. One afternoon in January, Mrs.\nFairfax had begged a holiday for Adèle, because she had a cold; and, as\nAdèle seconded the request with an ardour that reminded me how precious\noccasional holidays had been to me in my own childhood, I accorded it,\ndeeming that I did well in showing pliability on the point. It was a\nfine, calm day, though very cold; I was tired of sitting still in the\nlibrary through a whole long morning: Mrs. Fairfax had just written a\nletter which was waiting to be posted, so I put on my bonnet and cloak\nand volunteered to carry it to Hay; the distance, two miles, would be a\npleasant winter afternoon walk. Having seen Adèle comfortably seated in\nher little chair by Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour fireside, and given her her\nbest wax doll (which I usually kept enveloped in silver paper in a\ndrawer) to play with, and a story-book for change of amusement; and\nhaving replied to her “Revenez bientôt, ma bonne amie, ma chère Mdlle.\nJeannette,” with a kiss, I set out.\nThe ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely; I walked\nfast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the\nspecies of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was\nthree o’clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the\ncharm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding\nand pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for\nwild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now\npossessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best\nwinter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a\nbreath of air stirred, it made no sound here; for there was not a\nholly, not an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel\nbushes were as still as the white, worn stones which causewayed the\nmiddle of the path. Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields,\nwhere no cattle now browsed; and the little brown birds, which stirred\noccasionally in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had\nforgotten to drop.\nThis lane inclined up-hill all the way to Hay; having reached the\nmiddle, I sat down on a stile which led thence into a field. Gathering\nmy mantle about me, and sheltering my hands in my muff, I did not feel\nthe cold, though it froze keenly; as was attested by a sheet of ice\ncovering the causeway, where a little brooklet, now congealed, had\noverflowed after a rapid thaw some days since. From my seat I could\nlook down on Thornfield: the grey and battlemented hall was the\nprincipal object in the vale below me; its woods and dark rookery rose\nagainst the west. I lingered till the sun went down amongst the trees,\nand sank crimson and clear behind them. I then turned eastward.\nOn the hill-top above me sat the rising moon; pale yet as a cloud, but\nbrightening momentarily, she looked over Hay, which, half lost in\ntrees, sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys: it was yet a mile\ndistant, but in the absolute hush I could hear plainly its thin murmurs\nof life. My ear, too, felt the flow of currents; in what dales and\ndepths I could not tell: but there were many hills beyond Hay, and\ndoubtless many becks threading their passes. That evening calm betrayed\nalike the tinkle of the nearest streams, the sough of the most remote.\nA rude noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at once so\nfar away and so clear: a positive tramp, tramp, a metallic clatter,\nwhich effaced the soft wave-wanderings; as, in a picture, the solid\nmass of a crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn in dark and\nstrong on the foreground, efface the aërial distance of azure hill,\nsunny horizon, and blended clouds where tint melts into tint.\nThe din was on the causeway: a horse was coming; the windings of the\nlane yet hid it, but it approached. I was just leaving the stile; yet,\nas the path was narrow, I sat still to let it go by. In those days I\nwas young, and all sorts of fancies bright and dark tenanted my mind:\nthe memories of nursery stories were there amongst other rubbish; and\nwhen they recurred, maturing youth added to them a vigour and vividness\nbeyond what childhood could give. As this horse approached, and as I\nwatched for it to appear through the dusk, I remembered certain of\nBessie’s tales, wherein figured a North-of-England spirit called a\n“Gytrash,” which, in the form of horse, mule, or large dog, haunted\nsolitary ways, and sometimes came upon belated travellers, as this\nhorse was now coming upon me.\nIt was very near, but not yet in sight; when, in addition to the tramp,\ntramp, I heard a rush under the hedge, and close down by the hazel\nstems glided a great dog, whose black and white colour made him a\ndistinct object against the trees. It was exactly one form of Bessie’s\nGytrash—a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head: it passed\nme, however, quietly enough; not staying to look up, with strange\npretercanine eyes, in my face, as I half expected it would. The horse\nfollowed,—a tall steed, and on its back a rider. The man, the human\nbeing, broke the spell at once. Nothing ever rode the Gytrash: it was\nalways alone; and goblins, to my notions, though they might tenant the\ndumb carcasses of beasts, could scarce covet shelter in the commonplace\nhuman form. No Gytrash was this,—only a traveller taking the short cut\nto Millcote. He passed, and I went on; a few steps, and I turned: a\nsliding sound and an exclamation of “What the deuce is to do now?” and\na clattering tumble, arrested my attention. Man and horse were down;\nthey had slipped on the sheet of ice which glazed the causeway. The dog\ncame bounding back, and seeing his master in a predicament, and hearing\nthe horse groan, barked till the evening hills echoed the sound, which\nwas deep in proportion to his magnitude. He snuffed round the prostrate\ngroup, and then he ran up to me; it was all he could do,—there was no\nother help at hand to summon. I obeyed him, and walked down to the\ntraveller, by this time struggling himself free of his steed. His\nefforts were so vigorous, I thought he could not be much hurt; but I\nasked him the question—\n“Are you injured, sir?”\nI think he was swearing, but am not certain; however, he was\npronouncing some formula which prevented him from replying to me\ndirectly.\n“Can I do anything?” I asked again.\n“You must just stand on one side,” he answered as he rose, first to his\nknees, and then to his feet. I did; whereupon began a heaving,\nstamping, clattering process, accompanied by a barking and baying which\nremoved me effectually some yards’ distance; but I would not be driven\nquite away till I saw the event. This was finally fortunate; the horse\nwas re-established, and the dog was silenced with a “Down, Pilot!” The\ntraveller now, stooping, felt his foot and leg, as if trying whether\nthey were sound; apparently something ailed them, for he halted to the\nstile whence I had just risen, and sat down.\nI was in the mood for being useful, or at least officious, I think, for\nI now drew near him again.\n“If you are hurt, and want help, sir, I can fetch some one either from\nThornfield Hall or from Hay.”\n“Thank you: I shall do: I have no broken bones,—only a sprain;” and\nagain he stood up and tried his foot, but the result extorted an\ninvoluntary “Ugh!”\nSomething of daylight still lingered, and the moon was waxing bright: I\ncould see him plainly. His figure was enveloped in a riding cloak, fur\ncollared and steel clasped; its details were not apparent, but I traced\nthe general points of middle height and considerable breadth of chest.\nHe had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and\ngathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he was past\nyouth, but had not reached middle-age; perhaps he might be thirty-five.\nI felt no fear of him, and but little shyness. Had he been a handsome,\nheroic-looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus\nquestioning him against his will, and offering my services unasked. I\nhad hardly ever seen a handsome youth; never in my life spoken to one.\nI had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance,\ngallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in\nmasculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither\nhad nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have\nshunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is\nbright but antipathetic.\nIf even this stranger had smiled and been good-humoured to me when I\naddressed him; if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and with\nthanks, I should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew\ninquiries: but the frown, the roughness of the traveller, set me at my\nease: I retained my station when he waved to me to go, and announced—\n“I cannot think of leaving you, sir, at so late an hour, in this\nsolitary lane, till I see you are fit to mount your horse.”\nHe looked at me when I said this; he had hardly turned his eyes in my\ndirection before.\n“I should think you ought to be at home yourself,” said he, “if you\nhave a home in this neighbourhood: where do you come from?”\n“From just below; and I am not at all afraid of being out late when it\nis moonlight: I will run over to Hay for you with pleasure, if you wish\nit: indeed, I am going there to post a letter.”\n“You live just below—do you mean at that house with the battlements?”\npointing to Thornfield Hall, on which the moon cast a hoary gleam,\nbringing it out distinct and pale from the woods that, by contrast with\nthe western sky, now seemed one mass of shadow.\n“Yes, sir.”\n“Whose house is it?”\n“Mr. Rochester’s.”\n“Do you know Mr. Rochester?”\n“No, I have never seen him.”\n“He is not resident, then?”\n“No.”\n“Can you tell me where he is?”\n“I cannot.”\n“You are not a servant at the hall, of course. You are—” He stopped,\nran his eye over my dress, which, as usual, was quite simple: a black\nmerino cloak, a black beaver bonnet; neither of them half fine enough\nfor a lady’s-maid. He seemed puzzled to decide what I was; I helped\nhim.\n“I am the governess.”\n“Ah, the governess!” he repeated; “deuce take me, if I had not\nforgotten! The governess!” and again my raiment underwent scrutiny. In\ntwo minutes he rose from the stile: his face expressed pain when he\ntried to move.\n“I cannot commission you to fetch help,” he said; “but you may help me\na little yourself, if you will be so kind.”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“You have not an umbrella that I can use as a stick?”\n“No.”\n“Try to get hold of my horse’s bridle and lead him to me: you are not\nafraid?”\nI should have been afraid to touch a horse when alone, but when told to\ndo it, I was disposed to obey. I put down my muff on the stile, and\nwent up to the tall steed; I endeavoured to catch the bridle, but it\nwas a spirited thing, and would not let me come near its head; I made\neffort on effort, though in vain: meantime, I was mortally afraid of\nits trampling fore-feet. The traveller waited and watched for some\ntime, and at last he laughed.\nI was mortally afraid of its trampling forefeet\n“I see,” he said, “the mountain will never be brought to Mahomet, so\nall you can do is to aid Mahomet to go to the mountain; I must beg of\nyou to come here.”\nI came. “Excuse me,” he continued: “necessity compels me to make you\nuseful.” He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, and leaning on me with\nsome stress, limped to his horse. Having once caught the bridle, he\nmastered it directly and sprang to his saddle; grimacing grimly as he\nmade the effort, for it wrenched his sprain.\n“Now,” said he, releasing his under lip from a hard bite, “just hand me\nmy whip; it lies there under the hedge.”\nI sought it and found it.\n“Thank you; now make haste with the letter to Hay, and return as fast\nas you can.”\nA touch of a spurred heel made his horse first start and rear, and then\nbound away; the dog rushed in his traces; all three vanished,\n“Like heath that, in the wilderness,\n    The wild wind whirls away.”\nI took up my muff and walked on. The incident had occurred and was gone\nfor me: it _was_ an incident of no moment, no romance, no interest in a\nsense; yet it marked with change one single hour of a monotonous life.\nMy help had been needed and claimed; I had given it: I was pleased to\nhave done something; trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was\nyet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive. The\nnew face, too, was like a new picture introduced to the gallery of\nmemory; and it was dissimilar to all the others hanging there: firstly,\nbecause it was masculine; and, secondly, because it was dark, strong,\nand stern. I had it still before me when I entered Hay, and slipped the\nletter into the post-office; I saw it as I walked fast down-hill all\nthe way home. When I came to the stile, I stopped a minute, looked\nround and listened, with an idea that a horse’s hoofs might ring on the\ncauseway again, and that a rider in a cloak, and a Gytrash-like\nNewfoundland dog, might be again apparent: I saw only the hedge and a\npollard willow before me, rising up still and straight to meet the\nmoonbeams; I heard only the faintest waft of wind roaming fitful among\nthe trees round Thornfield, a mile distant; and when I glanced down in\nthe direction of the murmur, my eye, traversing the hall-front, caught\na light kindling in a window: it reminded me that I was late, and I\nhurried on.\nI did not like re-entering Thornfield. To pass its threshold was to\nreturn to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome\nstaircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to meet tranquil\nMrs. Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with her, and her only,\nwas to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk,—to slip\nagain over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too\nstill existence; of an existence whose very privileges of security and\nease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. What good it would have\ndone me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain\nstruggling life, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience\nto long for the calm amidst which I now repined! Yes, just as much good\nas it would do a man tired of sitting still in a “too easy chair” to\ntake a long walk: and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my\ncircumstances, as it would be under his.\nI lingered at the gates; I lingered on the lawn; I paced backwards and\nforwards on the pavement; the shutters of the glass door were closed; I\ncould not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed\ndrawn from the gloomy house—from the grey hollow filled with rayless\ncells, as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me,—a blue sea\nabsolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march;\nher orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which\nshe had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith,\nmidnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance; and for\nthose trembling stars that followed her course; they made my heart\ntremble, my veins glow when I viewed them. Little things recall us to\nearth; the clock struck in the hall; that sufficed; I turned from moon\nand stars, opened a side-door, and went in.\nThe hall was not dark, nor yet was it lit, only by the high-hung bronze\nlamp; a warm glow suffused both it and the lower steps of the oak\nstaircase. This ruddy shine issued from the great dining-room, whose\ntwo-leaved door stood open, and showed a genial fire in the grate,\nglancing on marble hearth and brass fire-irons, and revealing purple\ndraperies and polished furniture, in the most pleasant radiance. It\nrevealed, too, a group near the mantelpiece: I had scarcely caught it,\nand scarcely become aware of a cheerful mingling of voices, amongst\nwhich I seemed to distinguish the tones of Adèle, when the door closed.\nI hastened to Mrs. Fairfax’s room; there was a fire there too, but no\ncandle, and no Mrs. Fairfax. Instead, all alone, sitting upright on the\nrug, and gazing with gravity at the blaze, I beheld a great black and\nwhite long-haired dog, just like the Gytrash of the lane. It was so\nlike it that I went forward and said—“Pilot,” and the thing got up and\ncame to me and snuffed me. I caressed him, and he wagged his great\ntail; but he looked an eerie creature to be alone with, and I could not\ntell whence he had come. I rang the bell, for I wanted a candle; and I\nwanted, too, to get an account of this visitant. Leah entered.\n“What dog is this?”\n“He came with master.”\n“With whom?”\n“With master—Mr. Rochester—he is just arrived.”\n“Indeed! and is Mrs. Fairfax with him?”\n“Yes, and Miss Adèle; they are in the dining-room, and John is gone for\na surgeon; for master has had an accident; his horse fell and his ankle\nis sprained.”\n“Did the horse fall in Hay Lane?”\n“Yes, coming down-hill; it slipped on some ice.”\n“Ah! Bring me a candle will you Leah?”\nLeah brought it; she entered, followed by Mrs. Fairfax, who repeated\nthe news; adding that Mr. Carter the surgeon was come, and was now with\nMr. Rochester: then she hurried out to give orders about tea, and I\nwent upstairs to take off my things.\n', 'Mr. Rochester, it seems, by the surgeon’s orders, went to bed early\nthat night; nor did he rise soon next morning. When he did come down,\nit was to attend to business: his agent and some of his tenants were\narrived, and waiting to speak with him.\nAdèle and I had now to vacate the library: it would be in daily\nrequisition as a reception-room for callers. A fire was lit in an\napartment upstairs, and there I carried our books, and arranged it for\nthe future schoolroom. I discerned in the course of the morning that\nThornfield Hall was a changed place: no longer silent as a church, it\nechoed every hour or two to a knock at the door, or a clang of the\nbell; steps, too, often traversed the hall, and new voices spoke in\ndifferent keys below; a rill from the outer world was flowing through\nit; it had a master: for my part, I liked it better.\nAdèle was not easy to teach that day; she could not apply: she kept\nrunning to the door and looking over the banisters to see if she could\nget a glimpse of Mr. Rochester; then she coined pretexts to go\ndownstairs, in order, as I shrewdly suspected, to visit the library,\nwhere I knew she was not wanted; then, when I got a little angry, and\nmade her sit still, she continued to talk incessantly of her “ami,\nMonsieur Edouard Fairfax _de_ Rochester,” as she dubbed him (I had not\nbefore heard his prenomens), and to conjecture what presents he had\nbrought her: for it appears he had intimated the night before, that\nwhen his luggage came from Millcote, there would be found amongst it a\nlittle box in whose contents she had an interest.\n“Et cela doit signifier,” said she, “qu’il y aura là dedans un cadeau\npour moi, et peut-être pour vous aussi, mademoiselle. Monsieur a parlé\nde vous: il m’a demandé le nom de ma gouvernante, et si elle n’était\npas une petite personne, assez mince et un peu pâle. J’ai dit qu’oui:\ncar c’est vrai, n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?”\nI and my pupil dined as usual in Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour; the afternoon\nwas wild and snowy, and we passed it in the schoolroom. At dark I\nallowed Adèle to put away books and work, and to run downstairs; for,\nfrom the comparative silence below, and from the cessation of appeals\nto the door-bell, I conjectured that Mr. Rochester was now at liberty.\nLeft alone, I walked to the window; but nothing was to be seen thence:\ntwilight and snowflakes together thickened the air, and hid the very\nshrubs on the lawn. I let down the curtain and went back to the\nfireside.\nIn the clear embers I was tracing a view, not unlike a picture I\nremembered to have seen of the castle of Heidelberg, on the Rhine, when\nMrs. Fairfax came in, breaking up by her entrance the fiery mosaic I\nhad been piercing together, and scattering too some heavy unwelcome\nthoughts that were beginning to throng on my solitude.\n“Mr. Rochester would be glad if you and your pupil would take tea with\nhim in the drawing-room this evening,” said she: “he has been so much\nengaged all day that he could not ask to see you before.”\n“When is his tea-time?” I inquired.\n“Oh, at six o’clock: he keeps early hours in the country. You had\nbetter change your frock now; I will go with you and fasten it. Here is\na candle.”\n“Is it necessary to change my frock?”\n“Yes, you had better: I always dress for the evening when Mr. Rochester\nis here.”\nThis additional ceremony seemed somewhat stately; however, I repaired\nto my room, and, with Mrs. Fairfax’s aid, replaced my black stuff dress\nby one of black silk; the best and the only additional one I had,\nexcept one of light grey, which, in my Lowood notions of the toilette,\nI thought too fine to be worn, except on first-rate occasions.\n“You want a brooch,” said Mrs. Fairfax. I had a single little pearl\nornament which Miss Temple gave me as a parting keepsake: I put it on,\nand then we went downstairs. Unused as I was to strangers, it was\nrather a trial to appear thus formally summoned in Mr. Rochester’s\npresence. I let Mrs. Fairfax precede me into the dining-room, and kept\nin her shade as we crossed that apartment; and, passing the arch, whose\ncurtain was now dropped, entered the elegant recess beyond.\nTwo wax candles stood lighted on the table, and two on the mantelpiece;\nbasking in the light and heat of a superb fire, lay Pilot—Adèle knelt\nnear him. Half reclined on a couch appeared Mr. Rochester, his foot\nsupported by the cushion; he was looking at Adèle and the dog: the fire\nshone full on his face. I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty\neyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of\nhis black hair. I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for\ncharacter than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler;\nhis grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim, and no\nmistake. His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in\nsquareness with his physiognomy: I suppose it was a good figure in the\nathletic sense of the term—broad chested and thin flanked, though\nneither tall nor graceful.\nMr. Rochester must have been aware of the entrance of Mrs. Fairfax and\nmyself; but it appeared he was not in the mood to notice us, for he\nnever lifted his head as we approached.\n“Here is Miss Eyre, sir,” said Mrs. Fairfax, in her quiet way. He\nbowed, still not taking his eyes from the group of the dog and child.\n“Let Miss Eyre be seated,” said he: and there was something in the\nforced stiff bow, in the impatient yet formal tone, which seemed\nfurther to express, “What the deuce is it to me whether Miss Eyre be\nthere or not? At this moment I am not disposed to accost her.”\nI sat down quite disembarrassed. A reception of finished politeness\nwould probably have confused me: I could not have returned or repaid it\nby answering grace and elegance on my part; but harsh caprice laid me\nunder no obligation; on the contrary, a decent quiescence, under the\nfreak of manner, gave me the advantage. Besides, the eccentricity of\nthe proceeding was piquant: I felt interested to see how he would go\non.\nHe went on as a statue would, that is, he neither spoke nor moved. Mrs.\nFairfax seemed to think it necessary that some one should be amiable,\nand she began to talk. Kindly, as usual—and, as usual, rather trite—she\ncondoled with him on the pressure of business he had had all day; on\nthe annoyance it must have been to him with that painful sprain: then\nshe commended his patience and perseverance in going through with it.\n“Madam, I should like some tea,” was the sole rejoinder she got. She\nhastened to ring the bell; and when the tray came, she proceeded to\narrange the cups, spoons, &c., with assiduous celerity. I and Adèle\nwent to the table; but the master did not leave his couch.\n“Will you hand Mr. Rochester’s cup?” said Mrs. Fairfax to me; “Adèle\nmight perhaps spill it.”\nI did as requested. As he took the cup from my hand, Adèle, thinking\nthe moment propitious for making a request in my favour, cried out—\n“N’est-ce pas, monsieur, qu’il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre\ndans votre petit coffre?”\n“Who talks of cadeaux?” said he gruffly. “Did you expect a present,\nMiss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?” and he searched my face with eyes\nthat I saw were dark, irate, and piercing.\n“I hardly know, sir; I have little experience of them: they are\ngenerally thought pleasant things.”\n“Generally thought? But what do _you_ think?”\n“I should be obliged to take time, sir, before I could give you an\nanswer worthy of your acceptance: a present has many faces to it, has\nit not? and one should consider all, before pronouncing an opinion as\nto its nature.”\n“Miss Eyre, you are not so unsophisticated as Adèle: she demands a\n‘cadeau,’ clamorously, the moment she sees me: you beat about the\nbush.”\n“Because I have less confidence in my deserts than Adèle has: she can\nprefer the claim of old acquaintance, and the right too of custom; for\nshe says you have always been in the habit of giving her playthings;\nbut if I had to make out a case I should be puzzled, since I am a\nstranger, and have done nothing to entitle me to an acknowledgment.”\n“Oh, don’t fall back on over-modesty! I have examined Adèle, and find\nyou have taken great pains with her: she is not bright, she has no\ntalents; yet in a short time she has made much improvement.”\n“Sir, you have now given me my ‘cadeau;’ I am obliged to you: it is the\nmeed teachers most covet—praise of their pupils’ progress.”\n“Humph!” said Mr. Rochester, and he took his tea in silence.\n“Come to the fire,” said the master, when the tray was taken away, and\nMrs. Fairfax had settled into a corner with her knitting; while Adèle\nwas leading me by the hand round the room, showing me the beautiful\nbooks and ornaments on the consoles and chiffonnières. We obeyed, as in\nduty bound; Adèle wanted to take a seat on my knee, but she was ordered\nto amuse herself with Pilot.\n“You have been resident in my house three months?”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“And you came from—?”\n“From Lowood school, in ——shire.”\n“Ah! a charitable concern. How long were you there?”\n“Eight years.”\n“Eight years! you must be tenacious of life. I thought half the time in\nsuch a place would have done up any constitution! No wonder you have\nrather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that\nsort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought\nunaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you\nhad bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet. Who are your parents?”\n“I have none.”\n“Nor ever had, I suppose: do you remember them?”\n“No.”\n“I thought not. And so you were waiting for your people when you sat on\nthat stile?”\n“For whom, sir?”\n“For the men in green: it was a proper moonlight evening for them. Did\nI break through one of your rings, that you spread that damned ice on\nthe causeway?”\nI shook my head. “The men in green all forsook England a hundred years\nago,” said I, speaking as seriously as he had done. “And not even in\nHay Lane, or the fields about it, could you find a trace of them. I\ndon’t think either summer or harvest, or winter moon, will ever shine\non their revels more.”\nMrs. Fairfax had dropped her knitting, and, with raised eyebrows,\nseemed wondering what sort of talk this was.\n“Well,” resumed Mr. Rochester, “if you disown parents, you must have\nsome sort of kinsfolk: uncles and aunts?”\n“No; none that I ever saw.”\n“And your home?”\n“I have none.”\n“Where do your brothers and sisters live?”\n“I have no brothers or sisters.”\n“Who recommended you to come here?”\n“I advertised, and Mrs. Fairfax answered my advertisement.”\n“Yes,” said the good lady, who now knew what ground we were upon, “and\nI am daily thankful for the choice Providence led me to make. Miss Eyre\nhas been an invaluable companion to me, and a kind and careful teacher\nto Adèle.”\n“Don’t trouble yourself to give her a character,” returned Mr.\nRochester: “eulogiums will not bias me; I shall judge for myself. She\nbegan by felling my horse.”\n“Sir?” said Mrs. Fairfax.\n“I have to thank her for this sprain.”\nThe widow looked bewildered.\n“Miss Eyre, have you ever lived in a town?”\n“No, sir.”\n“Have you seen much society?”\n“None but the pupils and teachers of Lowood, and now the inmates of\nThornfield.”\n“Have you read much?”\n“Only such books as came in my way; and they have not been numerous or\nvery learned.”\n“You have lived the life of a nun: no doubt you are well drilled in\nreligious forms;—Brocklehurst, who I understand directs Lowood, is a\nparson, is he not?”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“And you girls probably worshipped him, as a convent full of\nreligieuses would worship their director.”\n“Oh, no.”\n“You are very cool! No! What! a novice not worship her priest! That\nsounds blasphemous.”\n“I disliked Mr. Brocklehurst; and I was not alone in the feeling. He is\na harsh man; at once pompous and meddling; he cut off our hair; and for\neconomy’s sake bought us bad needles and thread, with which we could\nhardly sew.”\n“That was very false economy,” remarked Mrs. Fairfax, who now again\ncaught the drift of the dialogue.\n“And was that the head and front of his offending?” demanded Mr.\nRochester.\n“He starved us when he had the sole superintendence of the provision\ndepartment, before the committee was appointed; and he bored us with\nlong lectures once a week, and with evening readings from books of his\nown inditing, about sudden deaths and judgments, which made us afraid\nto go to bed.”\n“What age were you when you went to Lowood?”\n“About ten.”\n“And you stayed there eight years: you are now, then, eighteen?”\nI assented.\n“Arithmetic, you see, is useful; without its aid, I should hardly have\nbeen able to guess your age. It is a point difficult to fix where the\nfeatures and countenance are so much at variance as in your case. And\nnow what did you learn at Lowood? Can you play?”\n“A little.”\n“Of course: that is the established answer. Go into the library—I mean,\nif you please.—(Excuse my tone of command; I am used to say, ‘Do this,’\nand it is done: I cannot alter my customary habits for one new\ninmate.)—Go, then, into the library; take a candle with you; leave the\ndoor open; sit down to the piano, and play a tune.”\nI departed, obeying his directions.\n“Enough!” he called out in a few minutes. “You play _a little_, I see;\nlike any other English school-girl; perhaps rather better than some,\nbut not well.”\nI closed the piano and returned. Mr. Rochester continued—\n“Adèle showed me some sketches this morning, which she said were yours.\nI don’t know whether they were entirely of your doing; probably a\nmaster aided you?”\n“No, indeed!” I interjected.\n“Ah! that pricks pride. Well, fetch me your portfolio, if you can vouch\nfor its contents being original; but don’t pass your word unless you\nare certain: I can recognise patchwork.”\n“Then I will say nothing, and you shall judge for yourself, sir.”\nI brought the portfolio from the library.\n“Approach the table,” said he; and I wheeled it to his couch. Adèle and\nMrs. Fairfax drew near to see the pictures.\n“No crowding,” said Mr. Rochester: “take the drawings from my hand as I\nfinish with them; but don’t push your faces up to mine.”\nHe deliberately scrutinised each sketch and painting. Three he laid\naside; the others, when he had examined them, he swept from him.\n“Take them off to the other table, Mrs. Fairfax,” said he, “and look at\nthem with Adèle;—you” (glancing at me) “resume your seat, and answer my\nquestions. I perceive those pictures were done by one hand: was that\nhand yours?”\n“Yes.”\n“And when did you find time to do them? They have taken much time, and\nsome thought.”\n“I did them in the last two vacations I spent at Lowood, when I had no\nother occupation.”\n“Where did you get your copies?”\n“Out of my head.”\n“That head I see now on your shoulders?”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“Has it other furniture of the same kind within?”\n“I should think it may have: I should hope—better.”\nHe spread the pictures before him, and again surveyed them alternately.\nWhile he is so occupied, I will tell you, reader, what they are: and\nfirst, I must premise that they are nothing wonderful. The subjects\nhad, indeed, risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with the spiritual\neye, before I attempted to embody them, they were striking; but my hand\nwould not second my fancy, and in each case it had wrought out but a\npale portrait of the thing I had conceived.\nThese pictures were in water-colours. The first represented clouds low\nand livid, rolling over a swollen sea: all the distance was in eclipse;\nso, too, was the foreground; or rather, the nearest billows, for there\nwas no land. One gleam of light lifted into relief a half-submerged\nmast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and large, with wings flecked with\nfoam; its beak held a gold bracelet set with gems, that I had touched\nwith as brilliant tints as my palette could yield, and as glittering\ndistinctness as my pencil could impart. Sinking below the bird and\nmast, a drowned corpse glanced through the green water; a fair arm was\nthe only limb clearly visible, whence the bracelet had been washed or\ntorn.\nThe second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak of a\nhill, with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze. Beyond and\nabove spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at twilight: rising into\nthe sky was a woman’s shape to the bust, portrayed in tints as dusk and\nsoft as I could combine. The dim forehead was crowned with a star; the\nlineaments below were seen as through the suffusion of vapour; the eyes\nshone dark and wild; the hair streamed shadowy, like a beamless cloud\ntorn by storm or by electric travail. On the neck lay a pale reflection\nlike moonlight; the same faint lustre touched the train of thin clouds\nfrom which rose and bowed this vision of the Evening Star.\nThe third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter\nsky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close\nserried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in the\nforeground, a head,—a colossal head, inclined towards the iceberg, and\nresting against it. Two thin hands, joined under the forehead, and\nsupporting it, drew up before the lower features a sable veil; a brow\nquite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye hollow and fixed, blank of\nmeaning but for the glassiness of despair, alone were visible. Above\nthe temples, amidst wreathed turban folds of black drapery, vague in\nits character and consistency as cloud, gleamed a ring of white flame,\ngemmed with sparkles of a more lurid tinge. This pale crescent was “the\nlikeness of a kingly crown;” what it diademed was “the shape which\nshape had none.”\n“Were you happy when you painted these pictures?” asked Mr. Rochester\npresently.\n“I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in short,\nwas to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known.”\n“That is not saying much. Your pleasures, by your own account, have\nbeen few; but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist’s dreamland\nwhile you blent and arranged these strange tints. Did you sit at them\nlong each day?”\n“I had nothing else to do, because it was the vacation, and I sat at\nthem from morning till noon, and from noon till night: the length of\nthe midsummer days favoured my inclination to apply.”\n“And you felt self-satisfied with the result of your ardent labours?”\n“Far from it. I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my\nhandiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite\npowerless to realise.”\n“Not quite: you have secured the shadow of your thought; but no more,\nprobably. You had not enough of the artist’s skill and science to give\nit full being: yet the drawings are, for a school-girl, peculiar. As to\nthe thoughts, they are elfish. These eyes in the Evening Star you must\nhave seen in a dream. How could you make them look so clear, and yet\nnot at all brilliant? for the planet above quells their rays. And what\nmeaning is that in their solemn depth? And who taught you to paint\nwind? There is a high gale in that sky, and on this hill-top. Where did\nyou see Latmos? For that is Latmos. There! put the drawings away!”\nI had scarce tied the strings of the portfolio, when, looking at his\nwatch, he said abruptly—\n“It is nine o’clock: what are you about, Miss Eyre, to let Adèle sit up\nso long? Take her to bed.”\nAdèle went to kiss him before quitting the room: he endured the caress,\nbut scarcely seemed to relish it more than Pilot would have done, nor\nso much.\n“I wish you all good-night, now,” said he, making a movement of the\nhand towards the door, in token that he was tired of our company, and\nwished to dismiss us. Mrs. Fairfax folded up her knitting: I took my\nportfolio: we curtseyed to him, received a frigid bow in return, and so\nwithdrew.\n“You said Mr. Rochester was not strikingly peculiar, Mrs. Fairfax,” I\nobserved, when I rejoined her in her room, after putting Adèle to bed.\n“Well, is he?”\n“I think so: he is very changeful and abrupt.”\n“True: no doubt he may appear so to a stranger, but I am so accustomed\nto his manner, I never think of it; and then, if he has peculiarities\nof temper, allowance should be made.”\n“Why?”\n“Partly because it is his nature—and we can none of us help our nature;\nand partly because he has painful thoughts, no doubt, to harass him,\nand make his spirits unequal.”\n“What about?”\n“Family troubles, for one thing.”\n“But he has no family.”\n“Not now, but he has had—or, at least, relatives. He lost his elder\nbrother a few years since.”\n“His _elder_ brother?”\n“Yes. The present Mr. Rochester has not been very long in possession of\nthe property; only about nine years.”\n“Nine years is a tolerable time. Was he so very fond of his brother as\nto be still inconsolable for his loss?”\n“Why, no—perhaps not. I believe there were some misunderstandings\nbetween them. Mr. Rowland Rochester was not quite just to Mr. Edward;\nand perhaps he prejudiced his father against him. The old gentleman was\nfond of money, and anxious to keep the family estate together. He did\nnot like to diminish the property by division, and yet he was anxious\nthat Mr. Edward should have wealth, too, to keep up the consequence of\nthe name; and, soon after he was of age, some steps were taken that\nwere not quite fair, and made a great deal of mischief. Old Mr.\nRochester and Mr. Rowland combined to bring Mr. Edward into what he\nconsidered a painful position, for the sake of making his fortune: what\nthe precise nature of that position was I never clearly knew, but his\nspirit could not brook what he had to suffer in it. He is not very\nforgiving: he broke with his family, and now for many years he has led\nan unsettled kind of life. I don’t think he has ever been resident at\nThornfield for a fortnight together, since the death of his brother\nwithout a will left him master of the estate; and, indeed, no wonder he\nshuns the old place.”\n“Why should he shun it?”\n“Perhaps he thinks it gloomy.”\nThe answer was evasive. I should have liked something clearer; but Mrs.\nFairfax either could not, or would not, give me more explicit\ninformation of the origin and nature of Mr. Rochester’s trials. She\naverred they were a mystery to herself, and that what she knew was\nchiefly from conjecture. It was evident, indeed, that she wished me to\ndrop the subject, which I did accordingly.\n', 'For several subsequent days I saw little of Mr. Rochester. In the\nmornings he seemed much engaged with business, and, in the afternoon,\ngentlemen from Millcote or the neighbourhood called, and sometimes\nstayed to dine with him. When his sprain was well enough to admit of\nhorse exercise, he rode out a good deal; probably to return these\nvisits, as he generally did not come back till late at night.\nDuring this interval, even Adèle was seldom sent for to his presence,\nand all my acquaintance with him was confined to an occasional\nrencontre in the hall, on the stairs, or in the gallery, when he would\nsometimes pass me haughtily and coldly, just acknowledging my presence\nby a distant nod or a cool glance, and sometimes bow and smile with\ngentlemanlike affability. His changes of mood did not offend me,\nbecause I saw that I had nothing to do with their alternation; the ebb\nand flow depended on causes quite disconnected with me.\nOne day he had had company to dinner, and had sent for my portfolio; in\norder, doubtless, to exhibit its contents: the gentlemen went away\nearly, to attend a public meeting at Millcote, as Mrs. Fairfax informed\nme; but the night being wet and inclement, Mr. Rochester did not\naccompany them. Soon after they were gone he rang the bell: a message\ncame that I and Adèle were to go downstairs. I brushed Adèle’s hair and\nmade her neat, and having ascertained that I was myself in my usual\nQuaker trim, where there was nothing to retouch—all being too close and\nplain, braided locks included, to admit of disarrangement—we descended,\nAdèle wondering whether the _petit coffre_ was at length come; for,\nowing to some mistake, its arrival had hitherto been delayed. She was\ngratified: there it stood, a little carton, on the table when we\nentered the dining-room. She appeared to know it by instinct.\n“Ma boite! ma boite!” exclaimed she, running towards it.\n“Yes, there is your ‘boite’ at last: take it into a corner, you genuine\ndaughter of Paris, and amuse yourself with disembowelling it,” said the\ndeep and rather sarcastic voice of Mr. Rochester, proceeding from the\ndepths of an immense easy-chair at the fireside. “And mind,” he\ncontinued, “don’t bother me with any details of the anatomical process,\nor any notice of the condition of the entrails: let your operation be\nconducted in silence: tiens-toi tranquille, enfant; comprends-tu?”\nAdèle seemed scarcely to need the warning; she had already retired to a\nsofa with her treasure, and was busy untying the cord which secured the\nlid. Having removed this impediment, and lifted certain silvery\nenvelopes of tissue paper, she merely exclaimed—\n“Oh ciel! Que c’est beau!” and then remained absorbed in ecstatic\ncontemplation.\n“Is Miss Eyre there?” now demanded the master, half rising from his\nseat to look round to the door, near which I still stood.\n“Ah! well, come forward; be seated here.” He drew a chair near his own.\n“I am not fond of the prattle of children,” he continued; “for, old\nbachelor as I am, I have no pleasant associations connected with their\nlisp. It would be intolerable to me to pass a whole evening\n_tête-à-tête_ with a brat. Don’t draw that chair farther off, Miss\nEyre; sit down exactly where I placed it—if you please, that is.\nConfound these civilities! I continually forget them. Nor do I\nparticularly affect simple-minded old ladies. By-the-bye, I must have\nmine in mind; it won’t do to neglect her; she is a Fairfax, or wed to\none; and blood is said to be thicker than water.”\nHe rang, and despatched an invitation to Mrs. Fairfax, who soon\narrived, knitting-basket in hand.\n“Good evening, madam; I sent to you for a charitable purpose. I have\nforbidden Adèle to talk to me about her presents, and she is bursting\nwith repletion; have the goodness to serve her as auditress and\ninterlocutrice; it will be one of the most benevolent acts you ever\nperformed.”\nAdèle, indeed, no sooner saw Mrs. Fairfax, than she summoned her to her\nsofa, and there quickly filled her lap with the porcelain, the ivory,\nthe waxen contents of her “boite;” pouring out, meantime, explanations\nand raptures in such broken English as she was mistress of.\n“Now I have performed the part of a good host,” pursued Mr. Rochester,\n“put my guests into the way of amusing each other, I ought to be at\nliberty to attend to my own pleasure. Miss Eyre, draw your chair still\na little farther forward: you are yet too far back; I cannot see you\nwithout disturbing my position in this comfortable chair, which I have\nno mind to do.”\nI did as I was bid, though I would much rather have remained somewhat\nin the shade; but Mr. Rochester had such a direct way of giving orders,\nit seemed a matter of course to obey him promptly.\nWe were, as I have said, in the dining-room: the lustre, which had been\nlit for dinner, filled the room with a festal breadth of light; the\nlarge fire was all red and clear; the purple curtains hung rich and\nample before the lofty window and loftier arch; everything was still,\nsave the subdued chat of Adèle (she dared not speak loud), and, filling\nup each pause, the beating of winter rain against the panes.\nMr. Rochester, as he sat in his damask-covered chair, looked different\nto what I had seen him look before; not quite so stern—much less\ngloomy. There was a smile on his lips, and his eyes sparkled, whether\nwith wine or not, I am not sure; but I think it very probable. He was,\nin short, in his after-dinner mood; more expanded and genial, and also\nmore self-indulgent than the frigid and rigid temper of the morning;\nstill he looked preciously grim, cushioning his massive head against\nthe swelling back of his chair, and receiving the light of the fire on\nhis granite-hewn features, and in his great, dark eyes; for he had\ngreat, dark eyes, and very fine eyes, too—not without a certain change\nin their depths sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you,\nat least, of that feeling.\nHe had been looking two minutes at the fire, and I had been looking the\nsame length of time at him, when, turning suddenly, he caught my gaze\nfastened on his physiognomy.\n“You examine me, Miss Eyre,” said he: “do you think me handsome?”\nI should, if I had deliberated, have replied to this question by\nsomething conventionally vague and polite; but the answer somehow\nslipped from my tongue before I was aware—“No, sir.”\n“Ah! By my word! there is something singular about you,” said he: “you\nhave the air of a little _nonnette_; quaint, quiet, grave, and simple,\nas you sit with your hands before you, and your eyes generally bent on\nthe carpet (except, by-the-bye, when they are directed piercingly to my\nface; as just now, for instance); and when one asks you a question, or\nmakes a remark to which you are obliged to reply, you rap out a round\nrejoinder, which, if not blunt, is at least brusque. What do you mean\nby it?”\n“Sir, I was too plain; I beg your pardon. I ought to have replied that\nit was not easy to give an impromptu answer to a question about\nappearances; that tastes mostly differ; and that beauty is of little\nconsequence, or something of that sort.”\n“You ought to have replied no such thing. Beauty of little consequence,\nindeed! And so, under pretence of softening the previous outrage, of\nstroking and soothing me into placidity, you stick a sly penknife under\nmy ear! Go on: what fault do you find with me, pray? I suppose I have\nall my limbs and all my features like any other man?”\n“Mr. Rochester, allow me to disown my first answer: I intended no\npointed repartee: it was only a blunder.”\n“Just so: I think so: and you shall be answerable for it. Criticise me:\ndoes my forehead not please you?”\nHe lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over his\nbrow, and showed a solid enough mass of intellectual organs, but an\nabrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should have\nrisen.\n“Now, ma’am, am I a fool?”\n“Far from it, sir. You would, perhaps, think me rude if I inquired in\nreturn whether you are a philanthropist?”\n“There again! Another stick of the penknife, when she pretended to pat\nmy head: and that is because I said I did not like the society of\nchildren and old women (low be it spoken!). No, young lady, I am not a\ngeneral philanthropist; but I bear a conscience;” and he pointed to the\nprominences which are said to indicate that faculty, and which,\nfortunately for him, were sufficiently conspicuous; giving, indeed, a\nmarked breadth to the upper part of his head: “and, besides, I once had\na kind of rude tenderness of heart. When I was as old as you, I was a\nfeeling fellow enough; partial to the unfledged, unfostered, and\nunlucky; but Fortune has knocked me about since: she has even kneaded\nme with her knuckles, and now I flatter myself I am hard and tough as\nan India-rubber ball; pervious, though, through a chink or two still,\nand with one sentient point in the middle of the lump. Yes: does that\nleave hope for me?”\n“Hope of what, sir?”\n“Of my final re-transformation from India-rubber back to flesh?”\n“Decidedly he has had too much wine,” I thought; and I did not know\nwhat answer to make to his queer question: how could I tell whether he\nwas capable of being re-transformed?\n“You looked very much puzzled, Miss Eyre; and though you are not pretty\nany more than I am handsome, yet a puzzled air becomes you; besides, it\nis convenient, for it keeps those searching eyes of yours away from my\nphysiognomy, and busies them with the worsted flowers of the rug; so\npuzzle on. Young lady, I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative\nto-night.”\nWith this announcement he rose from his chair, and stood, leaning his\narm on the marble mantelpiece: in that attitude his shape was seen\nplainly as well as his face; his unusual breadth of chest,\ndisproportionate almost to his length of limb. I am sure most people\nwould have thought him an ugly man; yet there was so much unconscious\npride in his port; so much ease in his demeanour; such a look of\ncomplete indifference to his own external appearance; so haughty a\nreliance on the power of other qualities, intrinsic or adventitious, to\natone for the lack of mere personal attractiveness, that, in looking at\nhim, one inevitably shared the indifference, and, even in a blind,\nimperfect sense, put faith in the confidence.\n“I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night,” he\nrepeated, “and that is why I sent for you: the fire and the chandelier\nwere not sufficient company for me; nor would Pilot have been, for none\nof these can talk. Adèle is a degree better, but still far below the\nmark; Mrs. Fairfax ditto; you, I am persuaded, can suit me if you will:\nyou puzzled me the first evening I invited you down here. I have almost\nforgotten you since: other ideas have driven yours from my head; but\nto-night I am resolved to be at ease; to dismiss what importunes, and\nrecall what pleases. It would please me now to draw you out—to learn\nmore of you—therefore speak.”\nInstead of speaking, I smiled; and not a very complacent or submissive\nsmile either.\n“Speak,” he urged.\n“What about, sir?”\n“Whatever you like. I leave both the choice of subject and the manner\nof treating it entirely to yourself.”\nAccordingly I sat and said nothing: “If he expects me to talk for the\nmere sake of talking and showing off, he will find he has addressed\nhimself to the wrong person,” I thought.\n“You are dumb, Miss Eyre.”\nI was dumb still. He bent his head a little towards me, and with a\nsingle hasty glance seemed to dive into my eyes.\n“Stubborn?” he said, “and annoyed. Ah! it is consistent. I put my\nrequest in an absurd, almost insolent form. Miss Eyre, I beg your\npardon. The fact is, once for all, I don’t wish to treat you like an\ninferior: that is” (correcting himself), “I claim only such superiority\nas must result from twenty years’ difference in age and a century’s\nadvance in experience. This is legitimate, _et j’y tiens_, as Adèle\nwould say; and it is by virtue of this superiority, and this alone,\nthat I desire you to have the goodness to talk to me a little now, and\ndivert my thoughts, which are galled with dwelling on one\npoint—cankering as a rusty nail.”\nHe had deigned an explanation, almost an apology, and I did not feel\ninsensible to his condescension, and would not seem so.\n“I am willing to amuse you, if I can, sir—quite willing; but I cannot\nintroduce a topic, because how do I know what will interest you? Ask me\nquestions, and I will do my best to answer them.”\n“Then, in the first place, do you agree with me that I have a right to\nbe a little masterful, abrupt, perhaps exacting, sometimes, on the\ngrounds I stated, namely, that I am old enough to be your father, and\nthat I have battled through a varied experience with many men of many\nnations, and roamed over half the globe, while you have lived quietly\nwith one set of people in one house?”\n“Do as you please, sir.”\n“That is no answer; or rather it is a very irritating, because a very\nevasive one. Reply clearly.”\n“I don’t think, sir, you have a right to command me, merely because you\nare older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I\nhave; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of\nyour time and experience.”\n“Humph! Promptly spoken. But I won’t allow that, seeing that it would\nnever suit my case, as I have made an indifferent, not to say a bad,\nuse of both advantages. Leaving superiority out of the question, then,\nyou must still agree to receive my orders now and then, without being\npiqued or hurt by the tone of command. Will you?”\nI smiled: I thought to myself Mr. Rochester _is_ peculiar—he seems to\nforget that he pays me £30 per annum for receiving his orders.\n“The smile is very well,” said he, catching instantly the passing\nexpression; “but speak too.”\n“I was thinking, sir, that very few masters would trouble themselves to\ninquire whether or not their paid subordinates were piqued and hurt by\ntheir orders.”\n“Paid subordinates! What! you are my paid subordinate, are you? Oh yes,\nI had forgotten the salary! Well then, on that mercenary ground, will\nyou agree to let me hector a little?”\n“No, sir, not on that ground; but, on the ground that you did forget\nit, and that you care whether or not a dependent is comfortable in his\ndependency, I agree heartily.”\n“And will you consent to dispense with a great many conventional forms\nand phrases, without thinking that the omission arises from insolence?”\n“I am sure, sir, I should never mistake informality for insolence: one\nI rather like, the other nothing free-born would submit to, even for a\nsalary.”\n“Humbug! Most things free-born will submit to anything for a salary;\ntherefore, keep to yourself, and don’t venture on generalities of which\nyou are intensely ignorant. However, I mentally shake hands with you\nfor your answer, despite its inaccuracy; and as much for the manner in\nwhich it was said, as for the substance of the speech; the manner was\nfrank and sincere; one does not often see such a manner: no, on the\ncontrary, affectation, or coldness, or stupid, coarse-minded\nmisapprehension of one’s meaning are the usual rewards of candour. Not\nthree in three thousand raw school-girl-governesses would have answered\nme as you have just done. But I don’t mean to flatter you: if you are\ncast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours:\nNature did it. And then, after all, I go too fast in my conclusions:\nfor what I yet know, you may be no better than the rest; you may have\nintolerable defects to counterbalance your few good points.”\n“And so may you,” I thought. My eye met his as the idea crossed my\nmind: he seemed to read the glance, answering as if its import had been\nspoken as well as imagined—\n“Yes, yes, you are right,” said he; “I have plenty of faults of my own:\nI know it, and I don’t wish to palliate them, I assure you. God wot I\nneed not be too severe about others; I have a past existence, a series\nof deeds, a colour of life to contemplate within my own breast, which\nmight well call my sneers and censures from my neighbours to myself. I\nstarted, or rather (for like other defaulters, I like to lay half the\nblame on ill fortune and adverse circumstances) was thrust on to a\nwrong tack at the age of one-and-twenty, and have never recovered the\nright course since: but I might have been very different; I might have\nbeen as good as you—wiser—almost as stainless. I envy you your peace of\nmind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a\nmemory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure—an\ninexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?”\n“How was your memory when you were eighteen, sir?”\n“All right then; limpid, salubrious: no gush of bilge water had turned\nit to fetid puddle. I was your equal at eighteen—quite your equal.\nNature meant me to be, on the whole, a good man, Miss Eyre; one of the\nbetter kind, and you see I am not so. You would say you don’t see it;\nat least I flatter myself I read as much in your eye (beware,\nby-the-bye, what you express with that organ; I am quick at\ninterpreting its language). Then take my word for it,—I am not a\nvillain: you are not to suppose that—not to attribute to me any such\nbad eminence; but, owing, I verily believe, rather to circumstances\nthan to my natural bent, I am a trite commonplace sinner, hackneyed in\nall the poor petty dissipations with which the rich and worthless try\nto put on life. Do you wonder that I avow this to you? Know, that in\nthe course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the\ninvoluntary confidant of your acquaintances’ secrets: people will\ninstinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to\ntell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they\nwill feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their\nindiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less\ncomforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its\nmanifestations.”\n“How do you know?—how can you guess all this, sir?”\n“I know it well; therefore I proceed almost as freely as if I were\nwriting my thoughts in a diary. You would say, I should have been\nsuperior to circumstances; so I should—so I should; but you see I was\nnot. When fate wronged me, I had not the wisdom to remain cool: I\nturned desperate; then I degenerated. Now, when any vicious simpleton\nexcites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry, I cannot flatter myself that\nI am better than he: I am forced to confess that he and I are on a\nlevel. I wish I had stood firm—God knows I do! Dread remorse when you\nare tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”\n“Repentance is said to be its cure, sir.”\n“It is not its cure. Reformation may be its cure; and I could reform—I\nhave strength yet for that—if—but where is the use of thinking of it,\nhampered, burdened, cursed as I am? Besides, since happiness is\nirrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and\nI _will_ get it, cost what it may.”\n“Then you will degenerate still more, sir.”\n“Possibly: yet why should I, if I can get sweet, fresh pleasure? And I\nmay get it as sweet and fresh as the wild honey the bee gathers on the\nmoor.”\n“It will sting—it will taste bitter, sir.”\n“How do you know?—you never tried it. How very serious—how very solemn\nyou look: and you are as ignorant of the matter as this cameo head”\n(taking one from the mantelpiece). “You have no right to preach to me,\nyou neophyte, that have not passed the porch of life, and are\nabsolutely unacquainted with its mysteries.”\n“I only remind you of your own words, sir: you said error brought\nremorse, and you pronounced remorse the poison of existence.”\n“And who talks of error now? I scarcely think the notion that flittered\nacross my brain was an error. I believe it was an inspiration rather\nthan a temptation: it was very genial, very soothing—I know that. Here\nit comes again! It is no devil, I assure you; or if it be, it has put\non the robes of an angel of light. I think I must admit so fair a guest\nwhen it asks entrance to my heart.”\n“Distrust it, sir; it is not a true angel.”\n“Once more, how do you know? By what instinct do you pretend to\ndistinguish between a fallen seraph of the abyss and a messenger from\nthe eternal throne—between a guide and a seducer?”\n“I judged by your countenance, sir, which was troubled when you said\nthe suggestion had returned upon you. I feel sure it will work you more\nmisery if you listen to it.”\n“Not at all—it bears the most gracious message in the world: for the\nrest, you are not my conscience-keeper, so don’t make yourself uneasy.\nHere, come in, bonny wanderer!”\nHe said this as if he spoke to a vision, viewless to any eye but his\nown; then, folding his arms, which he had half extended, on his chest,\nhe seemed to enclose in their embrace the invisible being.\n“Now,” he continued, again addressing me, “I have received the\npilgrim—a disguised deity, as I verily believe. Already it has done me\ngood: my heart was a sort of charnel; it will now be a shrine.”\n“To speak truth, sir, I don’t understand you at all: I cannot keep up\nthe conversation, because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing, I\nknow: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that\nyou regretted your own imperfection;—one thing I can comprehend: you\nintimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane. It seems\nto me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to\nbecome what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you\nbegan with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would\nin a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections,\nto which you might revert with pleasure.”\n“Justly thought; rightly said, Miss Eyre; and, at this moment, I am\npaving hell with energy.”\n“Sir?”\n“I am laying down good intentions, which I believe durable as flint.\nCertainly, my associates and pursuits shall be other than they have\nbeen.”\n“And better?”\n“And better—so much better as pure ore is than foul dross. You seem to\ndoubt me; I don’t doubt myself: I know what my aim is, what my motives\nare; and at this moment I pass a law, unalterable as that of the Medes\nand Persians, that both are right.”\n“They cannot be, sir, if they require a new statute to legalise them.”\n“They are, Miss Eyre, though they absolutely require a new statute:\nunheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules.”\n“That sounds a dangerous maxim, sir; because one can see at once that\nit is liable to abuse.”\n“Sententious sage! so it is: but I swear by my household gods not to\nabuse it.”\n“You are human and fallible.”\n“I am: so are you—what then?”\n“The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the\ndivine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.”\n“What power?”\n“That of saying of any strange, unsanctioned line of action,—‘Let it be\nright.’”\n“‘Let it be right’—the very words: you have pronounced them.”\n“_May_ it be right then,” I said, as I rose, deeming it useless to\ncontinue a discourse which was all darkness to me; and, besides,\nsensible that the character of my interlocutor was beyond my\npenetration; at least, beyond its present reach; and feeling the\nuncertainty, the vague sense of insecurity, which accompanies a\nconviction of ignorance.\n“Where are you going?”\n“To put Adèle to bed: it is past her bedtime.”\n“You are afraid of me, because I talk like a Sphynx.”\n“Your language is enigmatical, sir: but though I am bewildered, I am\ncertainly not afraid.”\n“You _are_ afraid—your self-love dreads a blunder.”\n“In that sense I do feel apprehensive—I have no wish to talk nonsense.”\n“If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should\nmistake it for sense. Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre? Don’t trouble\nyourself to answer—I see you laugh rarely; but you can laugh very\nmerrily: believe me, you are not naturally austere, any more than I am\nnaturally vicious. The Lowood constraint still clings to you somewhat;\ncontrolling your features, muffling your voice, and restricting your\nlimbs; and you fear in the presence of a man and a brother—or father,\nor master, or what you will—to smile too gaily, speak too freely, or\nmove too quickly: but, in time, I think you will learn to be natural\nwith me, as I find it impossible to be conventional with you; and then\nyour looks and movements will have more vivacity and variety than they\ndare offer now. I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird\nthrough the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute\ncaptive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high. You are\nstill bent on going?”\n“It has struck nine, sir.”\n“Never mind,—wait a minute: Adèle is not ready to go to bed yet. My\nposition, Miss Eyre, with my back to the fire, and my face to the room,\nfavours observation. While talking to you, I have also occasionally\nwatched Adèle (I have my own reasons for thinking her a curious\nstudy,—reasons that I may, nay, that I shall, impart to you some day).\nShe pulled out of her box, about ten minutes ago, a little pink silk\nfrock; rapture lit her face as she unfolded it; coquetry runs in her\nblood, blends with her brains, and seasons the marrow of her bones. ‘Il\nfaut que je l’essaie!’ cried she, ‘et à l’instant même!’ and she rushed\nout of the room. She is now with Sophie, undergoing a robing process:\nin a few minutes she will re-enter; and I know what I shall see,—a\nminiature of Céline Varens, as she used to appear on the boards at the\nrising of—But never mind that. However, my tenderest feelings are about\nto receive a shock: such is my presentiment; stay now, to see whether\nit will be realised.”\nEre long, Adèle’s little foot was heard tripping across the hall. She\nentered, transformed as her guardian had predicted. A dress of\nrose-coloured satin, very short, and as full in the skirt as it could\nbe gathered, replaced the brown frock she had previously worn; a wreath\nof rosebuds circled her forehead; her feet were dressed in silk\nstockings and small white satin sandals.\n“Est-ce que ma robe va bien?” cried she, bounding forwards; “et mes\nsouliers? et mes bas? Tenez, je crois que je vais danser!”\nAnd spreading out her dress, she chasséed across the room till, having\nreached Mr. Rochester, she wheeled lightly round before him on tip-toe,\nthen dropped on one knee at his feet, exclaiming—\n“Monsieur, je vous remercie mille fois de votre bonté;” then rising,\nshe added, “C’est comme cela que maman faisait, n’est-ce pas,\nmonsieur?”\n“Pre-cise-ly!” was the answer; “and, ‘comme cela,’ she charmed my\nEnglish gold out of my British breeches’ pocket. I have been green,\ntoo, Miss Eyre,—ay, grass green: not a more vernal tint freshens you\nnow than once freshened me. My Spring is gone, however, but it has left\nme that French floweret on my hands, which, in some moods, I would fain\nbe rid of. Not valuing now the root whence it sprang; having found that\nit was of a sort which nothing but gold dust could manure, I have but\nhalf a liking to the blossom, especially when it looks so artificial as\njust now. I keep it and rear it rather on the Roman Catholic principle\nof expiating numerous sins, great or small, by one good work. I’ll\nexplain all this some day. Good-night.”\n', 'Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it. It was one\nafternoon, when he chanced to meet me and Adèle in the grounds: and\nwhile she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked me to walk up\nand down a long beech avenue within sight of her.\nHe then said that she was the daughter of a French opera-dancer, Céline\nVarens, towards whom he had once cherished what he called a “_grande\npassion_.” This passion Céline had professed to return with even\nsuperior ardour. He thought himself her idol, ugly as he was: he\nbelieved, as he said, that she preferred his “_taille d’athlète_” to\nthe elegance of the Apollo Belvidere.\n“And, Miss Eyre, so much was I flattered by this preference of the\nGallic sylph for her British gnome, that I installed her in an hotel;\ngave her a complete establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmeres,\ndiamonds, dentelles, &c. In short, I began the process of ruining\nmyself in the received style, like any other spoony. I had not, it\nseems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and\ndestruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to\ndeviate an inch from the beaten centre. I had—as I deserved to have—the\nfate of all other spoonies. Happening to call one evening when Céline\ndid not expect me, I found her out; but it was a warm night, and I was\ntired with strolling through Paris, so I sat down in her boudoir; happy\nto breathe the air consecrated so lately by her presence. No,—I\nexaggerate; I never thought there was any consecrating virtue about\nher: it was rather a sort of pastille perfume she had left; a scent of\nmusk and amber, than an odour of sanctity. I was just beginning to\nstifle with the fumes of conservatory flowers and sprinkled essences,\nwhen I bethought myself to open the window and step out on to the\nbalcony. It was moonlight and gaslight besides, and very still and\nserene. The balcony was furnished with a chair or two; I sat down, and\ntook out a cigar,—I will take one now, if you will excuse me.”\nHere ensued a pause, filled up by the producing and lighting of a\ncigar; having placed it to his lips and breathed a trail of Havannah\nincense on the freezing and sunless air, he went on—\n“I liked bonbons too in those days, Miss Eyre, and I was\n_croquant_—(overlook the barbarism)—_croquant_ chocolate comfits, and\nsmoking alternately, watching meantime the equipages that rolled along\nthe fashionable streets towards the neighbouring opera-house, when in\nan elegant close carriage drawn by a beautiful pair of English horses,\nand distinctly seen in the brilliant city-night, I recognised the\n‘voiture’ I had given Céline. She was returning: of course my heart\nthumped with impatience against the iron rails I leant upon. The\ncarriage stopped, as I had expected, at the hotel door; my flame (that\nis the very word for an opera inamorata) alighted: though muffed in a\ncloak—an unnecessary encumbrance, by-the-bye, on so warm a June\nevening—I knew her instantly by her little foot, seen peeping from the\nskirt of her dress, as she skipped from the carriage-step. Bending over\nthe balcony, I was about to murmur ‘Mon ange’—in a tone, of course,\nwhich should be audible to the ear of love alone—when a figure jumped\nfrom the carriage after her; cloaked also; but that was a spurred heel\nwhich had rung on the pavement, and that was a hatted head which now\npassed under the arched _porte cochère_ of the hotel.\n“You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not\nask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to\nexperience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall\nwaken it. You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in\nwhich your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes\nand muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in\nthe bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I\ntell you—and you may mark my words—you will come some day to a craggy\npass in the channel, where the whole of life’s stream will be broken up\ninto whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to\natoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave\ninto a calmer current—as I am now.\n“I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and\nstillness of the world under this frost. I like Thornfield, its\nantiquity, its retirement, its old crow-trees and thorn-trees, its grey\nfaçade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin: and yet\nhow long have I abhorred the very thought of it, shunned it like a\ngreat plague-house? How I do still abhor—”\nHe ground his teeth and was silent: he arrested his step and struck his\nboot against the hard ground. Some hated thought seemed to have him in\nits grip, and to hold him so tightly that he could not advance.\nWe were ascending the avenue when he thus paused; the hall was before\nus. Lifting his eye to its battlements, he cast over them a glare such\nas I never saw before or since. Pain, shame, ire, impatience, disgust,\ndetestation, seemed momentarily to hold a quivering conflict in the\nlarge pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow. Wild was the wrestle which\nshould be paramount; but another feeling rose and triumphed: something\nhard and cynical: self-willed and resolute: it settled his passion and\npetrified his countenance: he went on—\n“During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point\nwith my destiny. She stood there, by that beech-trunk—a hag like one of\nthose who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres. ‘You like\nThornfield?’ she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the\nair a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the\nhouse-front, between the upper and lower row of windows, ‘Like it if\nyou can! Like it if you dare!’\n“‘I will like it,’ said I; ‘I dare like it;’ and” (he subjoined\nmoodily) “I will keep my word; I will break obstacles to happiness, to\ngoodness—yes, goodness. I wish to be a better man than I have been,\nthan I am; as Job’s leviathan broke the spear, the dart, and the\nhabergeon, hindrances which others count as iron and brass, I will\nesteem but straw and rotten wood.”\nAdèle here ran before him with her shuttlecock. “Away!” he cried\nharshly; “keep at a distance, child; or go in to Sophie!” Continuing\nthen to pursue his walk in silence, I ventured to recall him to the\npoint whence he had abruptly diverged—\n“Did you leave the balcony, sir,” I asked, “when Mdlle. Varens\nentered?”\nI almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question, but, on\nthe contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his\neyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. “Oh, I had\nforgotten Céline! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in\naccompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake\nof jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony,\nglided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my\nheart’s core. Strange!” he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the\npoint. “Strange that I should choose you for the confidant of all this,\nyoung lady; passing strange that you should listen to me quietly, as if\nit were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell\nstories of his opera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like\nyou! But the last singularity explains the first, as I intimated once\nbefore: you, with your gravity, considerateness, and caution were made\nto be the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what sort of a mind I\nhave placed in communication with my own: I know it is one not liable\nto take infection: it is a peculiar mind: it is a unique one. Happily I\ndo not mean to harm it: but, if I did, it would not take harm from me.\nThe more you and I converse, the better; for while I cannot blight you,\nyou may refresh me.” After this digression he proceeded—\n“I remained in the balcony. ‘They will come to her boudoir, no doubt,’\nthought I: ‘let me prepare an ambush.’ So putting my hand in through\nthe open window, I drew the curtain over it, leaving only an opening\nthrough which I could take observations; then I closed the casement,\nall but a chink just wide enough to furnish an outlet to lovers’\nwhispered vows: then I stole back to my chair; and as I resumed it the\npair came in. My eye was quickly at the aperture. Céline’s chamber-maid\nentered, lit a lamp, left it on the table, and withdrew. The couple\nwere thus revealed to me clearly: both removed their cloaks, and there\nwas ‘the Varens,’ shining in satin and jewels,—my gifts of course,—and\nthere was her companion in an officer’s uniform; and I knew him for a\nyoung roué of a vicomte—a brainless and vicious youth whom I had\nsometimes met in society, and had never thought of hating because I\ndespised him so absolutely. On recognising him, the fang of the snake\nJealousy was instantly broken; because at the same moment my love for\nCéline sank under an extinguisher. A woman who could betray me for such\na rival was not worth contending for; she deserved only scorn; less,\nhowever, than I, who had been her dupe.\n“They began to talk; their conversation eased me completely: frivolous,\nmercenary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather calculated to weary\nthan enrage a listener. A card of mine lay on the table; this being\nperceived, brought my name under discussion. Neither of them possessed\nenergy or wit to belabour me soundly, but they insulted me as coarsely\nas they could in their little way: especially Céline, who even waxed\nrather brilliant on my personal defects—deformities she termed them.\nNow it had been her custom to launch out into fervent admiration of\nwhat she called my ‘_beauté mâle_:’ wherein she differed diametrically\nfrom you, who told me point-blank, at the second interview, that you\ndid not think me handsome. The contrast struck me at the time and—”\nAdèle here came running up again.\n“Monsieur, John has just been to say that your agent has called and\nwishes to see you.”\n“Ah! in that case I must abridge. Opening the window, I walked in upon\nthem; liberated Céline from my protection; gave her notice to vacate\nher hotel; offered her a purse for immediate exigencies; disregarded\nscreams, hysterics, prayers, protestations, convulsions; made an\nappointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois de Boulogne.\nNext morning I had the pleasure of encountering him; left a bullet in\none of his poor etiolated arms, feeble as the wing of a chicken in the\npip, and then thought I had done with the whole crew. But unluckily the\nVarens, six months before, had given me this filette Adèle, who, she\naffirmed, was my daughter; and perhaps she may be, though I see no\nproofs of such grim paternity written in her countenance: Pilot is more\nlike me than she. Some years after I had broken with the mother, she\nabandoned her child, and ran away to Italy with a musician or singer. I\nacknowledged no natural claim on Adèle’s part to be supported by me,\nnor do I now acknowledge any, for I am not her father; but hearing that\nshe was quite destitute, I e’en took the poor thing out of the slime\nand mud of Paris, and transplanted it here, to grow up clean in the\nwholesome soil of an English country garden. Mrs. Fairfax found you to\ntrain it; but now you know that it is the illegitimate offspring of a\nFrench opera-girl, you will perhaps think differently of your post and\nprotégée: you will be coming to me some day with notice that you have\nfound another place—that you beg me to look out for a new governess,\n&c.—Eh?”\n“No: Adèle is not answerable for either her mother’s faults or yours: I\nhave a regard for her; and now that I know she is, in a sense,\nparentless—forsaken by her mother and disowned by you, sir—I shall\ncling closer to her than before. How could I possibly prefer the spoilt\npet of a wealthy family, who would hate her governess as a nuisance, to\na lonely little orphan, who leans towards her as a friend?”\n“Oh, that is the light in which you view it! Well, I must go in now;\nand you too: it darkens.”\nBut I stayed out a few minutes longer with Adèle and Pilot—ran a race\nwith her, and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock. When we went\nin, and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took her on my knee; kept\nher there an hour, allowing her to prattle as she liked: not rebuking\neven some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to\nstray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a superficiality of\ncharacter, inherited probably from her mother, hardly congenial to an\nEnglish mind. Still she had her merits; and I was disposed to\nappreciate all that was good in her to the utmost. I sought in her\ncountenance and features a likeness to Mr. Rochester, but found none:\nno trait, no turn of expression announced relationship. It was a pity:\nif she could but have been proved to resemble him, he would have\nthought more of her.\nIt was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for the night,\nthat I steadily reviewed the tale Mr. Rochester had told me. As he had\nsaid, there was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance\nof the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman’s passion for a French\ndancer, and her treachery to him, were every-day matters enough, no\ndoubt, in society; but there was something decidedly strange in the\nparoxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized him when he was in the\nact of expressing the present contentment of his mood, and his newly\nrevived pleasure in the old hall and its environs. I meditated\nwonderingly on this incident; but gradually quitting it, as I found it\nfor the present inexplicable, I turned to the consideration of my\nmaster’s manner to myself. The confidence he had thought fit to repose\nin me seemed a tribute to my discretion: I regarded and accepted it as\nsuch. His deportment had now for some weeks been more uniform towards\nme than at the first. I never seemed in his way; he did not take fits\nof chilling hauteur: when he met me unexpectedly, the encounter seemed\nwelcome; he had always a word and sometimes a smile for me: when\nsummoned by formal invitation to his presence, I was honoured by a\ncordiality of reception that made me feel I really possessed the power\nto amuse him, and that these evening conferences were sought as much\nfor his pleasure as for my benefit.\nI, indeed, talked comparatively little, but I heard him talk with\nrelish. It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to open to a\nmind unacquainted with the world glimpses of its scenes and ways (I do\nnot mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their\ninterest from the great scale on which they were acted, the strange\nnovelty by which they were characterised); and I had a keen delight in\nreceiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he\nportrayed, and following him in thought through the new regions he\ndisclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion.\nThe ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint: the friendly\nfrankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to\nhim. I felt at times as if he were my relation rather than my master:\nyet he was imperious sometimes still; but I did not mind that; I saw it\nwas his way. So happy, so gratified did I become with this new interest\nadded to life, that I ceased to pine after kindred: my thin\ncrescent-destiny seemed to enlarge; the blanks of existence were filled\nup; my bodily health improved; I gathered flesh and strength.\nAnd was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader: gratitude, and\nmany associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object\nI best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the\nbrightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could\nnot, for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud, sardonic,\nharsh to inferiority of every description: in my secret soul I knew\nthat his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many\nothers. He was moody, too; unaccountably so; I more than once, when\nsent for to read to him, found him sitting in his library alone, with\nhis head bent on his folded arms; and, when he looked up, a morose,\nalmost a malignant, scowl blackened his features. But I believed that\nhis moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say\n_former_, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their source in some\ncruel cross of fate. I believed he was naturally a man of better\ntendencies, higher principles, and purer tastes than such as\ncircumstances had developed, education instilled, or destiny\nencouraged. I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for\nthe present they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot\ndeny that I grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have\ngiven much to assuage it.\nThough I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed, I\ncould not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in the avenue,\nand told how his destiny had risen up before him, and dared him to be\nhappy at Thornfield.\n“Why not?” I asked myself. “What alienates him from the house? Will he\nleave it again soon? Mrs. Fairfax said he seldom stayed here longer\nthan a fortnight at a time; and he has now been resident eight weeks.\nIf he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent\nspring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will\nseem!”\nI hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing; at any\nrate, I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and\nlugubrious, which sounded, I thought, just above me. I wished I had\nkept my candle burning: the night was drearily dark; my spirits were\ndepressed. I rose and sat up in bed, listening. The sound was hushed.\nI tried again to sleep; but my heart beat anxiously: my inward\ntranquillity was broken. The clock, far down in the hall, struck two.\nJust then it seemed my chamber-door was touched; as if fingers had\nswept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside. I\nsaid, “Who is there?” Nothing answered. I was chilled with fear.\nAll at once I remembered that it might be Pilot, who, when the\nkitchen-door chanced to be left open, not unfrequently found his way up\nto the threshold of Mr. Rochester’s chamber: I had seen him lying there\nmyself in the mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat: I lay down.\nSilence composes the nerves; and as an unbroken hush now reigned again\nthrough the whole house, I began to feel the return of slumber. But it\nwas not fated that I should sleep that night. A dream had scarcely\napproached my ear, when it fled affrighted, scared by a marrow-freezing\nincident enough.\nThis was a demoniac laugh—low, suppressed, and deep—uttered, as it\nseemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door. The head of my bed was\nnear the door, and I thought at first the goblin-laugher stood at my\nbedside—or rather, crouched by my pillow: but I rose, looked round, and\ncould see nothing; while, as I still gazed, the unnatural sound was\nreiterated: and I knew it came from behind the panels. My first impulse\nwas to rise and fasten the bolt; my next, again to cry out, “Who is\nthere?”\nSomething gurgled and moaned. Ere long, steps retreated up the gallery\ntowards the third-storey staircase: a door had lately been made to shut\nin that staircase; I heard it open and close, and all was still.\n“Was that Grace Poole? and is she possessed with a devil?” thought I.\nImpossible now to remain longer by myself: I must go to Mrs. Fairfax. I\nhurried on my frock and a shawl; I withdrew the bolt and opened the\ndoor with a trembling hand. There was a candle burning just outside,\nand on the matting in the gallery. I was surprised at this\ncircumstance: but still more was I amazed to perceive the air quite\ndim, as if filled with smoke; and, while looking to the right hand and\nleft, to find whence these blue wreaths issued, I became further aware\nof a strong smell of burning.\nSomething creaked: it was a door ajar; and that door was Mr.\nRochester’s, and the smoke rushed in a cloud from thence. I thought no\nmore of Mrs. Fairfax; I thought no more of Grace Poole, or the laugh:\nin an instant, I was within the chamber. Tongues of flame darted round\nthe bed: the curtains were on fire. In the midst of blaze and vapour,\nMr. Rochester lay stretched motionless, in deep sleep.\n“Wake! wake!” I cried. I shook him, but he only murmured and turned:\nthe smoke had stupefied him. Not a moment could be lost: the very\nsheets were kindling, I rushed to his basin and ewer; fortunately, one\nwas wide and the other deep, and both were filled with water. I heaved\nthem up, deluged the bed and its occupant, flew back to my own room,\nbrought my own water-jug, baptized the couch afresh, and, by God’s aid,\nsucceeded in extinguishing the flames which were devouring it.\nThe hiss of the quenched element, the breakage of a pitcher which I\nflung from my hand when I had emptied it, and, above all, the splash of\nthe shower-bath I had liberally bestowed, roused Mr. Rochester at last.\nThough it was now dark, I knew he was awake; because I heard him\nfulminating strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of\nwater.\n“Is there a flood?” he cried.\n“No, sir,” I answered; “but there has been a fire: get up, do; you are\nquenched now; I will fetch you a candle.”\n“In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?” he\ndemanded. “What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the\nroom besides you? Have you plotted to drown me?”\n“I will fetch you a candle, sir; and, in Heaven’s name, get up.\nSomebody has plotted something: you cannot too soon find out who and\nwhat it is.”\n“There! I am up now; but at your peril you fetch a candle yet: wait two\nminutes till I get into some dry garments, if any dry there be—yes,\nhere is my dressing-gown. Now run!”\nI did run; I brought the candle which still remained in the gallery. He\ntook it from my hand, held it up, and surveyed the bed, all blackened\nand scorched, the sheets drenched, the carpet round swimming in water.\n“What is it? and who did it?” he asked.\nI briefly related to him what had transpired: the strange laugh I had\nheard in the gallery: the step ascending to the third storey; the\nsmoke,—the smell of fire which had conducted me to his room; in what\nstate I had found matters there, and how I had deluged him with all the\nwater I could lay hands on.\n“What is it and who did it?” he asked\nHe listened very gravely; his face, as I went on, expressed more\nconcern than astonishment; he did not immediately speak when I had\nconcluded.\n“Shall I call Mrs. Fairfax?” I asked.\n“Mrs. Fairfax? No; what the deuce would you call her for? What can she\ndo? Let her sleep unmolested.”\n“Then I will fetch Leah, and wake John and his wife.”\n“Not at all: just be still. You have a shawl on. If you are not warm\nenough, you may take my cloak yonder; wrap it about you, and sit down\nin the arm-chair: there,—I will put it on. Now place your feet on the\nstool, to keep them out of the wet. I am going to leave you a few\nminutes. I shall take the candle. Remain where you are till I return;\nbe as still as a mouse. I must pay a visit to the second storey. Don’t\nmove, remember, or call any one.”\nHe went: I watched the light withdraw. He passed up the gallery very\nsoftly, unclosed the staircase door with as little noise as possible,\nshut it after him, and the last ray vanished. I was left in total\ndarkness. I listened for some noise, but heard nothing. A very long\ntime elapsed. I grew weary: it was cold, in spite of the cloak; and\nthen I did not see the use of staying, as I was not to rouse the house.\nI was on the point of risking Mr. Rochester’s displeasure by disobeying\nhis orders, when the light once more gleamed dimly on the gallery wall,\nand I heard his unshod feet tread the matting. “I hope it is he,”\nthought I, “and not something worse.”\nHe re-entered, pale and very gloomy. “I have found it all out,” said\nhe, setting his candle down on the washstand; “it is as I thought.”\n“How, sir?”\nHe made no reply, but stood with his arms folded, looking on the\nground. At the end of a few minutes he inquired in rather a peculiar\ntone—\n“I forget whether you said you saw anything when you opened your\nchamber door.”\n“No, sir, only the candlestick on the ground.”\n“But you heard an odd laugh? You have heard that laugh before, I should\nthink, or something like it?”\n“Yes, sir: there is a woman who sews here, called Grace Poole,—she\nlaughs in that way. She is a singular person.”\n“Just so. Grace Poole—you have guessed it. She is, as you say,\nsingular—very. Well, I shall reflect on the subject. Meantime, I am\nglad that you are the only person, besides myself, acquainted with the\nprecise details of to-night’s incident. You are no talking fool: say\nnothing about it. I will account for this state of affairs” (pointing\nto the bed): “and now return to your own room. I shall do very well on\nthe sofa in the library for the rest of the night. It is near four:—in\ntwo hours the servants will be up.”\n“Good-night, then, sir,” said I, departing.\nHe seemed surprised—very inconsistently so, as he had just told me to\ngo.\n“What!” he exclaimed, “are you quitting me already, and in that way?”\n“You said I might go, sir.”\n“But not without taking leave; not without a word or two of\nacknowledgment and good-will: not, in short, in that brief, dry\nfashion. Why, you have saved my life!—snatched me from a horrible and\nexcruciating death! and you walk past me as if we were mutual\nstrangers! At least shake hands.”\nHe held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, then in\nboth his own.\n“You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a\ndebt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been\ntolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation:\nbut you: it is different;—I feel your benefits no burden, Jane.”\nHe paused; gazed at me: words almost visible trembled on his lips,—but\nhis voice was checked.\n“Good-night again, sir. There is no debt, benefit, burden, obligation,\nin the case.”\n“I knew,” he continued, “you would do me good in some way, at some\ntime;—I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression\nand smile did not”—(again he stopped)—“did not” (he proceeded hastily)\n“strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of\nnatural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of\ntruth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good-night!”\nStrange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look.\n“I am glad I happened to be awake,” I said: and then I was going.\n“What! you _will_ go?”\n“I am cold, sir.”\n“Cold? Yes,—and standing in a pool! Go, then, Jane; go!” But he still\nretained my hand, and I could not free it. I bethought myself of an\nexpedient.\n“I think I hear Mrs. Fairfax move, sir,” said I.\n“Well, leave me:” he relaxed his fingers, and I was gone.\nI regained my couch, but never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned I\nwas tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble\nrolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild\nwaters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a\nfreshening gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards\nthe bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy—a counteracting\nbreeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist\ndelirium: judgment would warn passion. Too feverish to rest, I rose as\nsoon as day dawned.\n', 'I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed\nthis sleepless night: I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to\nmeet his eye. During the early part of the morning, I momentarily\nexpected his coming; he was not in the frequent habit of entering the\nschoolroom, but he did step in for a few minutes sometimes, and I had\nthe impression that he was sure to visit it that day.\nBut the morning passed just as usual: nothing happened to interrupt the\nquiet course of Adèle’s studies; only soon after breakfast, I heard\nsome bustle in the neighbourhood of Mr. Rochester’s chamber, Mrs.\nFairfax’s voice, and Leah’s, and the cook’s—that is, John’s wife—and\neven John’s own gruff tones. There were exclamations of “What a mercy\nmaster was not burnt in his bed!” “It is always dangerous to keep a\ncandle lit at night.” “How providential that he had presence of mind to\nthink of the water-jug!” “I wonder he waked nobody!” “It is to be hoped\nhe will not take cold with sleeping on the library sofa,” &c.\nTo much confabulation succeeded a sound of scrubbing and setting to\nrights; and when I passed the room, in going downstairs to dinner, I\nsaw through the open door that all was again restored to complete\norder; only the bed was stripped of its hangings. Leah stood up in the\nwindow-seat, rubbing the panes of glass dimmed with smoke. I was about\nto address her, for I wished to know what account had been given of the\naffair: but, on advancing, I saw a second person in the chamber—a woman\nsitting on a chair by the bedside, and sewing rings to new curtains.\nThat woman was no other than Grace Poole.\nThere she sat, staid and taciturn-looking, as usual, in her brown stuff\ngown, her check apron, white handkerchief, and cap. She was intent on\nher work, in which her whole thoughts seemed absorbed: on her hard\nforehead, and in her commonplace features, was nothing either of the\npaleness or desperation one would have expected to see marking the\ncountenance of a woman who had attempted murder, and whose intended\nvictim had followed her last night to her lair, and (as I believed),\ncharged her with the crime she wished to perpetrate. I was\namazed—confounded. She looked up, while I still gazed at her: no start,\nno increase or failure of colour betrayed emotion, consciousness of\nguilt, or fear of detection. She said “Good morning, Miss,” in her\nusual phlegmatic and brief manner; and taking up another ring and more\ntape, went on with her sewing.\n“I will put her to some test,” thought I: “such absolute\nimpenetrability is past comprehension.”\n“Good morning, Grace,” I said. “Has anything happened here? I thought I\nheard the servants all talking together a while ago.”\n“Only master had been reading in his bed last night; he fell asleep\nwith his candle lit, and the curtains got on fire; but, fortunately, he\nawoke before the bed-clothes or the wood-work caught, and contrived to\nquench the flames with the water in the ewer.”\n“A strange affair!” I said, in a low voice: then, looking at her\nfixedly—“Did Mr. Rochester wake nobody? Did no one hear him move?”\nShe again raised her eyes to me, and this time there was something of\nconsciousness in their expression. She seemed to examine me warily;\nthen she answered—\n“The servants sleep so far off, you know, Miss, they would not be\nlikely to hear. Mrs. Fairfax’s room and yours are the nearest to\nmaster’s; but Mrs. Fairfax said she heard nothing: when people get\nelderly, they often sleep heavy.” She paused, and then added, with a\nsort of assumed indifference, but still in a marked and significant\ntone—“But you are young, Miss; and I should say a light sleeper:\nperhaps you may have heard a noise?”\n“I did,” said I, dropping my voice, so that Leah, who was still\npolishing the panes, could not hear me, “and at first I thought it was\nPilot: but Pilot cannot laugh; and I am certain I heard a laugh, and a\nstrange one.”\nShe took a new needleful of thread, waxed it carefully, threaded her\nneedle with a steady hand, and then observed, with perfect composure—\n“It is hardly likely master would laugh, I should think, Miss, when he\nwas in such danger: You must have been dreaming.”\n“I was not dreaming,” I said, with some warmth, for her brazen coolness\nprovoked me. Again she looked at me; and with the same scrutinising and\nconscious eye.\n“Have you told master that you heard a laugh?” she inquired.\n“I have not had the opportunity of speaking to him this morning.”\n“You did not think of opening your door and looking out into the\ngallery?” she further asked.\nShe appeared to be cross-questioning me, attempting to draw from me\ninformation unawares. The idea struck me that if she discovered I knew\nor suspected her guilt, she would be playing of some of her malignant\npranks on me; I thought it advisable to be on my guard.\n“On the contrary,” said I, “I bolted my door.”\n“Then you are not in the habit of bolting your door every night before\nyou get into bed?”\n“Fiend! she wants to know my habits, that she may lay her plans\naccordingly!” Indignation again prevailed over prudence: I replied\nsharply, “Hitherto I have often omitted to fasten the bolt: I did not\nthink it necessary. I was not aware any danger or annoyance was to be\ndreaded at Thornfield Hall: but in future” (and I laid marked stress on\nthe words) “I shall take good care to make all secure before I venture\nto lie down.”\n“It will be wise so to do,” was her answer: “this neighbourhood is as\nquiet as any I know, and I never heard of the hall being attempted by\nrobbers since it was a house; though there are hundreds of pounds’\nworth of plate in the plate-closet, as is well known. And you see, for\nsuch a large house, there are very few servants, because master has\nnever lived here much; and when he does come, being a bachelor, he\nneeds little waiting on: but I always think it best to err on the safe\nside; a door is soon fastened, and it is as well to have a drawn bolt\nbetween one and any mischief that may be about. A deal of people, Miss,\nare for trusting all to Providence; but I say Providence will not\ndispense with the means, though He often blesses them when they are\nused discreetly.” And here she closed her harangue: a long one for her,\nand uttered with the demureness of a Quakeress.\nI still stood absolutely dumfoundered at what appeared to me her\nmiraculous self-possession and most inscrutable hypocrisy, when the\ncook entered.\n“Mrs. Poole,” said she, addressing Grace, “the servants’ dinner will\nsoon be ready: will you come down?”\n“No; just put my pint of porter and bit of pudding on a tray, and I’ll\ncarry it upstairs.”\n“You’ll have some meat?”\n“Just a morsel, and a taste of cheese, that’s all.”\n“And the sago?”\n“Never mind it at present: I shall be coming down before teatime: I’ll\nmake it myself.”\nThe cook here turned to me, saying that Mrs. Fairfax was waiting for\nme: so I departed.\nI hardly heard Mrs. Fairfax’s account of the curtain conflagration\nduring dinner, so much was I occupied in puzzling my brains over the\nenigmatical character of Grace Poole, and still more in pondering the\nproblem of her position at Thornfield and questioning why she had not\nbeen given into custody that morning, or, at the very least, dismissed\nfrom her master’s service. He had almost as much as declared his\nconviction of her criminality last night: what mysterious cause\nwithheld him from accusing her? Why had he enjoined me, too, to\nsecrecy? It was strange: a bold, vindictive, and haughty gentleman\nseemed somehow in the power of one of the meanest of his dependents; so\nmuch in her power, that even when she lifted her hand against his life,\nhe dared not openly charge her with the attempt, much less punish her\nfor it.\nHad Grace been young and handsome, I should have been tempted to think\nthat tenderer feelings than prudence or fear influenced Mr. Rochester\nin her behalf; but, hard-favoured and matronly as she was, the idea\ncould not be admitted. “Yet,” I reflected, “she has been young once;\nher youth would be contemporary with her master’s: Mrs. Fairfax told me\nonce, she had lived here many years. I don’t think she can ever have\nbeen pretty; but, for aught I know, she may possess originality and\nstrength of character to compensate for the want of personal\nadvantages. Mr. Rochester is an amateur of the decided and eccentric:\nGrace is eccentric at least. What if a former caprice (a freak very\npossible to a nature so sudden and headstrong as his) has delivered him\ninto her power, and she now exercises over his actions a secret\ninfluence, the result of his own indiscretion, which he cannot shake\noff, and dare not disregard?” But, having reached this point of\nconjecture, Mrs. Poole’s square, flat figure, and uncomely, dry, even\ncoarse face, recurred so distinctly to my mind’s eye, that I thought,\n“No; impossible! my supposition cannot be correct. Yet,” suggested the\nsecret voice which talks to us in our own hearts, “_you_ are not\nbeautiful either, and perhaps Mr. Rochester approves you: at any rate,\nyou have often felt as if he did; and last night—remember his words;\nremember his look; remember his voice!”\nI well remembered all; language, glance, and tone seemed at the moment\nvividly renewed. I was now in the schoolroom; Adèle was drawing; I bent\nover her and directed her pencil. She looked up with a sort of start.\n“Qu’avez-vous, mademoiselle?” said she. “Vos doigts tremblent comme la\nfeuille, et vos joues sont rouges: mais, rouges comme des cerises!”\n“I am hot, Adèle, with stooping!” She went on sketching; I went on\nthinking.\nI hastened to drive from my mind the hateful notion I had been\nconceiving respecting Grace Poole; it disgusted me. I compared myself\nwith her, and found we were different. Bessie Leaven had said I was\nquite a lady; and she spoke truth—I was a lady. And now I looked much\nbetter than I did when Bessie saw me; I had more colour and more flesh,\nmore life, more vivacity, because I had brighter hopes and keener\nenjoyments.\n“Evening approaches,” said I, as I looked towards the window. “I have\nnever heard Mr. Rochester’s voice or step in the house to-day; but\nsurely I shall see him before night: I feared the meeting in the\nmorning; now I desire it, because expectation has been so long baffled\nthat it is grown impatient.”\nWhen dusk actually closed, and when Adèle left me to go and play in the\nnursery with Sophie, I did most keenly desire it. I listened for the\nbell to ring below; I listened for Leah coming up with a message; I\nfancied sometimes I heard Mr. Rochester’s own tread, and I turned to\nthe door, expecting it to open and admit him. The door remained shut;\ndarkness only came in through the window. Still it was not late; he\noften sent for me at seven and eight o’clock, and it was yet but six.\nSurely I should not be wholly disappointed to-night, when I had so many\nthings to say to him! I wanted again to introduce the subject of Grace\nPoole, and to hear what he would answer; I wanted to ask him plainly if\nhe really believed it was she who had made last night’s hideous\nattempt; and if so, why he kept her wickedness a secret. It little\nmattered whether my curiosity irritated him; I knew the pleasure of\nvexing and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in,\nand a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far; beyond the\nverge of provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked\nwell to try my skill. Retaining every minute form of respect, every\npropriety of my station, I could still meet him in argument without\nfear or uneasy restraint; this suited both him and me.\nA tread creaked on the stairs at last. Leah made her appearance; but it\nwas only to intimate that tea was ready in Mrs. Fairfax’s room. Thither\nI repaired, glad at least to go downstairs; for that brought me, I\nimagined, nearer to Mr. Rochester’s presence.\n“You must want your tea,” said the good lady, as I joined her; “you ate\nso little at dinner. I am afraid,” she continued, “you are not well\nto-day: you look flushed and feverish.”\n“Oh, quite well! I never felt better.”\n“Then you must prove it by evincing a good appetite; will you fill the\nteapot while I knit off this needle?” Having completed her task, she\nrose to draw down the blind, which she had hitherto kept up, by way, I\nsuppose, of making the most of daylight, though dusk was now fast\ndeepening into total obscurity.\n“It is fair to-night,” said she, as she looked through the panes,\n“though not starlight; Mr. Rochester has, on the whole, had a\nfavourable day for his journey.”\n“Journey!—Is Mr. Rochester gone anywhere? I did not know he was out.”\n“Oh, he set off the moment he had breakfasted! He is gone to the Leas,\nMr. Eshton’s place, ten miles on the other side Millcote. I believe\nthere is quite a party assembled there; Lord Ingram, Sir George Lynn,\nColonel Dent, and others.”\n“Do you expect him back to-night?”\n“No—nor to-morrow either; I should think he is very likely to stay a\nweek or more: when these fine, fashionable people get together, they\nare so surrounded by elegance and gaiety, so well provided with all\nthat can please and entertain, they are in no hurry to separate.\nGentlemen especially are often in request on such occasions; and Mr.\nRochester is so talented and so lively in society, that I believe he is\na general favourite: the ladies are very fond of him; though you would\nnot think his appearance calculated to recommend him particularly in\ntheir eyes: but I suppose his acquirements and abilities, perhaps his\nwealth and good blood, make amends for any little fault of look.”\n“Are there ladies at the Leas?”\n“There are Mrs. Eshton and her three daughters—very elegant young\nladies indeed; and there are the Honourable Blanche and Mary Ingram,\nmost beautiful women, I suppose: indeed I have seen Blanche, six or\nseven years since, when she was a girl of eighteen. She came here to a\nChristmas ball and party Mr. Rochester gave. You should have seen the\ndining-room that day—how richly it was decorated, how brilliantly lit\nup! I should think there were fifty ladies and gentlemen present—all of\nthe first county families; and Miss Ingram was considered the belle of\nthe evening.”\n“You saw her, you say, Mrs. Fairfax: what was she like?”\n“Yes, I saw her. The dining-room doors were thrown open; and, as it was\nChristmas-time, the servants were allowed to assemble in the hall, to\nhear some of the ladies sing and play. Mr. Rochester would have me to\ncome in, and I sat down in a quiet corner and watched them. I never saw\na more splendid scene: the ladies were magnificently dressed; most of\nthem—at least most of the younger ones—looked handsome; but Miss Ingram\nwas certainly the queen.”\n“And what was she like?”\n“Tall, fine bust, sloping shoulders; long, graceful neck: olive\ncomplexion, dark and clear; noble features; eyes rather like Mr.\nRochester’s: large and black, and as brilliant as her jewels. And then\nshe had such a fine head of hair; raven-black and so becomingly\narranged: a crown of thick plaits behind, and in front the longest, the\nglossiest curls I ever saw. She was dressed in pure white; an\namber-coloured scarf was passed over her shoulder and across her\nbreast, tied at the side, and descending in long, fringed ends below\nher knee. She wore an amber-coloured flower, too, in her hair: it\ncontrasted well with the jetty mass of her curls.”\n“She was greatly admired, of course?”\n“Yes, indeed: and not only for her beauty, but for her accomplishments.\nShe was one of the ladies who sang: a gentleman accompanied her on the\npiano. She and Mr. Rochester sang a duet.”\n“Mr. Rochester? I was not aware he could sing.”\n“Oh! he has a fine bass voice, and an excellent taste for music.”\n“And Miss Ingram: what sort of a voice had she?”\n“A very rich and powerful one: she sang delightfully; it was a treat to\nlisten to her;—and she played afterwards. I am no judge of music, but\nMr. Rochester is; and I heard him say her execution was remarkably\ngood.”\n“And this beautiful and accomplished lady, she is not yet married?”\n“It appears not: I fancy neither she nor her sister have very large\nfortunes. Old Lord Ingram’s estates were chiefly entailed, and the\neldest son came in for everything almost.”\n“But I wonder no wealthy nobleman or gentleman has taken a fancy to\nher: Mr. Rochester, for instance. He is rich, is he not?”\n“Oh! yes. But you see there is a considerable difference in age: Mr.\nRochester is nearly forty; she is but twenty-five.”\n“What of that? More unequal matches are made every day.”\n“True: yet I should scarcely fancy Mr. Rochester would entertain an\nidea of the sort. But you eat nothing: you have scarcely tasted since\nyou began tea.”\n“No: I am too thirsty to eat. Will you let me have another cup?”\nI was about again to revert to the probability of a union between Mr.\nRochester and the beautiful Blanche; but Adèle came in, and the\nconversation was turned into another channel.\nWhen once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into\nmy heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring\nback with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination’s\nboundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common sense.\nArraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes,\nwishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night—of the\ngeneral state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight\npast; Reason having come forward and told, in her own quiet way, a\nplain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and\nrabidly devoured the ideal;—I pronounced judgment to this effect:—\nThat a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of\nlife; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet\nlies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.\n“_You_,” I said, “a favourite with Mr. Rochester? _You_ gifted with the\npower of pleasing him? _You_ of importance to him in any way? Go! your\nfolly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens\nof preference—equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man\nof the world to a dependent and a novice. How dared you? Poor stupid\ndupe!—Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to\nyourself this morning the brief scene of last night?—Cover your face\nand be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind\npuppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed\nsenselessness! It does good to no woman to be flattered by her\nsuperior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in\nall women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned\nand unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and\nresponded to, must lead, _ignis-fatuus_-like, into miry wilds whence\nthere is no extrication.\n“Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: to-morrow, place the glass\nbefore you, and draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully, without\nsoftening one defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing\nirregularity; write under it, ‘Portrait of a Governess, disconnected,\npoor, and plain.’\n“Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory—you have one prepared in your\ndrawing-box: take your palette, mix your freshest, finest, clearest\ntints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate\ncarefully the loveliest face you can imagine; paint it in your softest\nshades and sweetest lines, according to the description given by Mrs.\nFairfax of Blanche Ingram; remember the raven ringlets, the oriental\neye;—What! you revert to Mr. Rochester as a model! Order! No snivel!—no\nsentiment!—no regret! I will endure only sense and resolution. Recall\nthe august yet harmonious lineaments, the Grecian neck and bust; let\nthe round and dazzling arm be visible, and the delicate hand; omit\nneither diamond ring nor gold bracelet; portray faithfully the attire,\naërial lace and glistening satin, graceful scarf and golden rose; call\nit ‘Blanche, an accomplished lady of rank.’\n“Whenever, in future, you should chance to fancy Mr. Rochester thinks\nwell of you, take out these two pictures and compare them: say, ‘Mr.\nRochester might probably win that noble lady’s love, if he chose to\nstrive for it; is it likely he would waste a serious thought on this\nindigent and insignificant plebeian?’”\n“I’ll do it,” I resolved: and having framed this determination, I grew\ncalm, and fell asleep.\nI kept my word. An hour or two sufficed to sketch my own portrait in\ncrayons; and in less than a fortnight I had completed an ivory\nminiature of an imaginary Blanche Ingram. It looked a lovely face\nenough, and when compared with the real head in chalk, the contrast was\nas great as self-control could desire. I derived benefit from the task:\nit had kept my head and hands employed, and had given force and\nfixedness to the new impressions I wished to stamp indelibly on my\nheart.\nEre long, I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of\nwholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit.\nThanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent\ncalm, which, had they found me unprepared, I should probably have been\nunequal to maintain, even externally.\n', 'A week passed, and no news arrived of Mr. Rochester: ten days, and\nstill he did not come. Mrs. Fairfax said she should not be surprised if\nhe were to go straight from the Leas to London, and thence to the\nContinent, and not show his face again at Thornfield for a year to\ncome; he had not unfrequently quitted it in a manner quite as abrupt\nand unexpected. When I heard this, I was beginning to feel a strange\nchill and failing at the heart. I was actually permitting myself to\nexperience a sickening sense of disappointment; but rallying my wits,\nand recollecting my principles, I at once called my sensations to\norder; and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder—how I\ncleared up the mistake of supposing Mr. Rochester’s movements a matter\nin which I had any cause to take a vital interest. Not that I humbled\nmyself by a slavish notion of inferiority: on the contrary, I just\nsaid—\n“You have nothing to do with the master of Thornfield, further than to\nreceive the salary he gives you for teaching his protégée, and to be\ngrateful for such respectful and kind treatment as, if you do your\nduty, you have a right to expect at his hands. Be sure that is the only\ntie he seriously acknowledges between you and him; so don’t make him\nthe object of your fine feelings, your raptures, agonies, and so forth.\nHe is not of your order: keep to your caste, and be too self-respecting\nto lavish the love of the whole heart, soul, and strength, where such a\ngift is not wanted and would be despised.”\nI went on with my day’s business tranquilly; but ever and anon vague\nsuggestions kept wandering across my brain of reasons why I should quit\nThornfield; and I kept involuntarily framing advertisements and\npondering conjectures about new situations: these thoughts I did not\nthink to check; they might germinate and bear fruit if they could.\nMr. Rochester had been absent upwards of a fortnight, when the post\nbrought Mrs. Fairfax a letter.\n“It is from the master,” said she, as she looked at the direction. “Now\nI suppose we shall know whether we are to expect his return or not.”\nAnd while she broke the seal and perused the document, I went on taking\nmy coffee (we were at breakfast): it was hot, and I attributed to that\ncircumstance a fiery glow which suddenly rose to my face. Why my hand\nshook, and why I involuntarily spilt half the contents of my cup into\nmy saucer, I did not choose to consider.\n“Well, I sometimes think we are too quiet; but we run a chance of being\nbusy enough now: for a little while at least,” said Mrs. Fairfax, still\nholding the note before her spectacles.\nEre I permitted myself to request an explanation, I tied the string of\nAdèle’s pinafore, which happened to be loose: having helped her also to\nanother bun and refilled her mug with milk, I said, nonchalantly—\n“Mr. Rochester is not likely to return soon, I suppose?”\n“Indeed he is—in three days, he says: that will be next Thursday; and\nnot alone either. I don’t know how many of the fine people at the Leas\nare coming with him: he sends directions for all the best bedrooms to\nbe prepared; and the library and drawing-rooms are to be cleaned out; I\nam to get more kitchen hands from the George Inn, at Millcote, and from\nwherever else I can; and the ladies will bring their maids and the\ngentlemen their valets: so we shall have a full house of it.” And Mrs.\nFairfax swallowed her breakfast and hastened away to commence\noperations.\nThe three days were, as she had foretold, busy enough. I had thought\nall the rooms at Thornfield beautifully clean and well arranged; but it\nappears I was mistaken. Three women were got to help; and such\nscrubbing, such brushing, such washing of paint and beating of carpets,\nsuch taking down and putting up of pictures, such polishing of mirrors\nand lustres, such lighting of fires in bedrooms, such airing of sheets\nand feather-beds on hearths, I never beheld, either before or since.\nAdèle ran quite wild in the midst of it: the preparations for company\nand the prospect of their arrival, seemed to throw her into ecstasies.\nShe would have Sophie to look over all her “toilettes,” as she called\nfrocks; to furbish up any that were “_passées_,” and to air and arrange\nthe new. For herself, she did nothing but caper about in the front\nchambers, jump on and off the bedsteads, and lie on the mattresses and\npiled-up bolsters and pillows before the enormous fires roaring in the\nchimneys. From school duties she was exonerated: Mrs. Fairfax had\npressed me into her service, and I was all day in the storeroom,\nhelping (or hindering) her and the cook; learning to make custards and\ncheese-cakes and French pastry, to truss game and garnish\ndesert-dishes.\nThe party were expected to arrive on Thursday afternoon, in time for\ndinner at six. During the intervening period I had no time to nurse\nchimeras; and I believe I was as active and gay as anybody—Adèle\nexcepted. Still, now and then, I received a damping check to my\ncheerfulness; and was, in spite of myself, thrown back on the region of\ndoubts and portents, and dark conjectures. This was when I chanced to\nsee the third-storey staircase door (which of late had always been kept\nlocked) open slowly, and give passage to the form of Grace Poole, in\nprim cap, white apron, and handkerchief; when I watched her glide along\nthe gallery, her quiet tread muffled in a list slipper; when I saw her\nlook into the bustling, topsy-turvy bedrooms,—just say a word, perhaps,\nto the charwoman about the proper way to polish a grate, or clean a\nmarble mantelpiece, or take stains from papered walls, and then pass\non. She would thus descend to the kitchen once a day, eat her dinner,\nsmoke a moderate pipe on the hearth, and go back, carrying her pot of\nporter with her, for her private solace, in her own gloomy, upper\nhaunt. Only one hour in the twenty-four did she pass with her\nfellow-servants below; all the rest of her time was spent in some\nlow-ceiled, oaken chamber of the second storey: there she sat and\nsewed—and probably laughed drearily to herself,—as companionless as a\nprisoner in his dungeon.\nThe strangest thing of all was, that not a soul in the house, except\nme, noticed her habits, or seemed to marvel at them: no one discussed\nher position or employment; no one pitied her solitude or isolation. I\nonce, indeed, overheard part of a dialogue between Leah and one of the\ncharwomen, of which Grace formed the subject. Leah had been saying\nsomething I had not caught, and the charwoman remarked—\n“She gets good wages, I guess?”\n“Yes,” said Leah; “I wish I had as good; not that mine are to complain\nof,—there’s no stinginess at Thornfield; but they’re not one fifth of\nthe sum Mrs. Poole receives. And she is laying by: she goes every\nquarter to the bank at Millcote. I should not wonder but she has saved\nenough to keep her independent if she liked to leave; but I suppose\nshe’s got used to the place; and then she’s not forty yet, and strong\nand able for anything. It is too soon for her to give up business.”\n“She is a good hand, I daresay,” said the charwoman.\n“Ah!—she understands what she has to do,—nobody better,” rejoined Leah\nsignificantly; “and it is not every one could fill her shoes—not for\nall the money she gets.”\n“That it is not!” was the reply. “I wonder whether the master—”\nThe charwoman was going on; but here Leah turned and perceived me, and\nshe instantly gave her companion a nudge.\n“Doesn’t she know?” I heard the woman whisper.\nLeah shook her head, and the conversation was of course dropped. All I\nhad gathered from it amounted to this,—that there was a mystery at\nThornfield; and that from participation in that mystery I was purposely\nexcluded.\nThursday came: all work had been completed the previous evening;\ncarpets were laid down, bed-hangings festooned, radiant white\ncounterpanes spread, toilet tables arranged, furniture rubbed, flowers\npiled in vases: both chambers and saloons looked as fresh and bright as\nhands could make them. The hall, too, was scoured; and the great carved\nclock, as well as the steps and banisters of the staircase, were\npolished to the brightness of glass; in the dining-room, the sideboard\nflashed resplendent with plate; in the drawing-room and boudoir, vases\nof exotics bloomed on all sides.\nAfternoon arrived: Mrs. Fairfax assumed her best black satin gown, her\ngloves, and her gold watch; for it was her part to receive the\ncompany,—to conduct the ladies to their rooms, &c. Adèle, too, would be\ndressed: though I thought she had little chance of being introduced to\nthe party that day at least. However, to please her, I allowed Sophie\nto apparel her in one of her short, full muslin frocks. For myself, I\nhad no need to make any change; I should not be called upon to quit my\nsanctum of the schoolroom; for a sanctum it was now become to me,—“a\nvery pleasant refuge in time of trouble.”\nIt had been a mild, serene spring day—one of those days which, towards\nthe end of March or the beginning of April, rise shining over the earth\nas heralds of summer. It was drawing to an end now; but the evening was\neven warm, and I sat at work in the schoolroom with the window open.\n“It gets late,” said Mrs. Fairfax, entering in rustling state. “I am\nglad I ordered dinner an hour after the time Mr. Rochester mentioned;\nfor it is past six now. I have sent John down to the gates to see if\nthere is anything on the road: one can see a long way from thence in\nthe direction of Millcote.” She went to the window. “Here he is!” said\nshe. “Well, John” (leaning out), “any news?”\n“They’re coming, ma’am,” was the answer. “They’ll be here in ten\nminutes.”\nAdèle flew to the window. I followed, taking care to stand on one side,\nso that, screened by the curtain, I could see without being seen.\nThe ten minutes John had given seemed very long, but at last wheels\nwere heard; four equestrians galloped up the drive, and after them came\ntwo open carriages. Fluttering veils and waving plumes filled the\nvehicles; two of the cavaliers were young, dashing-looking gentlemen;\nthe third was Mr. Rochester, on his black horse, Mesrour, Pilot\nbounding before him; at his side rode a lady, and he and she were the\nfirst of the party. Her purple riding-habit almost swept the ground,\nher veil streamed long on the breeze; mingling with its transparent\nfolds, and gleaming through them, shone rich raven ringlets.\n“Miss Ingram!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax, and away she hurried to her post\nbelow.\nThe cavalcade, following the sweep of the drive, quickly turned the\nangle of the house, and I lost sight of it. Adèle now petitioned to go\ndown; but I took her on my knee, and gave her to understand that she\nmust not on any account think of venturing in sight of the ladies,\neither now or at any other time, unless expressly sent for: that Mr.\nRochester would be very angry, &c. “Some natural tears she shed” on\nbeing told this; but as I began to look very grave, she consented at\nlast to wipe them.\nA joyous stir was now audible in the hall: gentlemen’s deep tones and\nladies’ silvery accents blent harmoniously together, and\ndistinguishable above all, though not loud, was the sonorous voice of\nthe master of Thornfield Hall, welcoming his fair and gallant guests\nunder its roof. Then light steps ascended the stairs; and there was a\ntripping through the gallery, and soft cheerful laughs, and opening and\nclosing doors, and, for a time, a hush.\n“Elles changent de toilettes,” said Adèle; who, listening attentively,\nhad followed every movement; and she sighed.\n“Chez maman,” said she, “quand il y avait du monde, je le suivais\npartout, au salon et à leurs chambres; souvent je regardais les femmes\nde chambre coiffer et habiller les dames, et c’était si amusant: comme\ncela on apprend.”\n“Don’t you feel hungry, Adèle?”\n“Mais oui, mademoiselle: voilà cinq ou six heures que nous n’avons pas\nmangé.”\n“Well now, while the ladies are in their rooms, I will venture down and\nget you something to eat.”\nAnd issuing from my asylum with precaution, I sought a back-stairs\nwhich conducted directly to the kitchen. All in that region was fire\nand commotion; the soup and fish were in the last stage of projection,\nand the cook hung over her crucibles in a frame of mind and body\nthreatening spontaneous combustion. In the servants’ hall two coachmen\nand three gentlemen’s gentlemen stood or sat round the fire; the\nabigails, I suppose, were upstairs with their mistresses; the new\nservants, that had been hired from Millcote, were bustling about\neverywhere. Threading this chaos, I at last reached the larder; there I\ntook possession of a cold chicken, a roll of bread, some tarts, a plate\nor two and a knife and fork: with this booty I made a hasty retreat. I\nhad regained the gallery, and was just shutting the back-door behind\nme, when an accelerated hum warned me that the ladies were about to\nissue from their chambers. I could not proceed to the schoolroom\nwithout passing some of their doors, and running the risk of being\nsurprised with my cargo of victualage; so I stood still at this end,\nwhich, being windowless, was dark: quite dark now, for the sun was set\nand twilight gathering.\nPresently the chambers gave up their fair tenants one after another:\neach came out gaily and airily, with dress that gleamed lustrous\nthrough the dusk. For a moment they stood grouped together at the other\nextremity of the gallery, conversing in a key of sweet subdued\nvivacity: they then descended the staircase almost as noiselessly as a\nbright mist rolls down a hill. Their collective appearance had left on\nme an impression of high-born elegance, such as I had never before\nreceived.\nI found Adèle peeping through the schoolroom door, which she held ajar.\n“What beautiful ladies!” cried she in English. “Oh, I wish I might go\nto them! Do you think Mr. Rochester will send for us by-and-by, after\ndinner?”\n“No, indeed, I don’t; Mr. Rochester has something else to think about.\nNever mind the ladies to-night; perhaps you will see them to-morrow:\nhere is your dinner.”\nShe was really hungry, so the chicken and tarts served to divert her\nattention for a time. It was well I secured this forage, or both she,\nI, and Sophie, to whom I conveyed a share of our repast, would have run\na chance of getting no dinner at all: every one downstairs was too much\nengaged to think of us. The dessert was not carried out till after\nnine; and at ten footmen were still running to and fro with trays and\ncoffee-cups. I allowed Adèle to sit up much later than usual; for she\ndeclared she could not possibly go to sleep while the doors kept\nopening and shutting below, and people bustling about. Besides, she\nadded, a message might possibly come from Mr. Rochester when she was\nundressed; “et alors quel dommage!”\nI told her stories as long as she would listen to them; and then for a\nchange I took her out into the gallery. The hall lamp was now lit, and\nit amused her to look over the balustrade and watch the servants\npassing backwards and forwards. When the evening was far advanced, a\nsound of music issued from the drawing-room, whither the piano had been\nremoved; Adèle and I sat down on the top step of the stairs to listen.\nPresently a voice blent with the rich tones of the instrument; it was a\nlady who sang, and very sweet her notes were. The solo over, a duet\nfollowed, and then a glee: a joyous conversational murmur filled up the\nintervals. I listened long: suddenly I discovered that my ear was\nwholly intent on analysing the mingled sounds, and trying to\ndiscriminate amidst the confusion of accents those of Mr. Rochester;\nand when it caught them, which it soon did, it found a further task in\nframing the tones, rendered by distance inarticulate, into words.\nThe clock struck eleven. I looked at Adèle, whose head leant against my\nshoulder; her eyes were waxing heavy, so I took her up in my arms and\ncarried her off to bed. It was near one before the gentlemen and ladies\nsought their chambers.\nThe next day was as fine as its predecessor: it was devoted by the\nparty to an excursion to some site in the neighbourhood. They set out\nearly in the forenoon, some on horseback, the rest in carriages; I\nwitnessed both the departure and the return. Miss Ingram, as before,\nwas the only lady equestrian; and, as before, Mr. Rochester galloped at\nher side; the two rode a little apart from the rest. I pointed out this\ncircumstance to Mrs. Fairfax, who was standing at the window with me—\n“You said it was not likely they should think of being married,” said\nI, “but you see Mr. Rochester evidently prefers her to any of the other\nladies.”\n“Yes, I daresay: no doubt he admires her.”\n“And she him,” I added; “look how she leans her head towards him as if\nshe were conversing confidentially; I wish I could see her face; I have\nnever had a glimpse of it yet.”\n“You will see her this evening,” answered Mrs. Fairfax. “I happened to\nremark to Mr. Rochester how much Adèle wished to be introduced to the\nladies, and he said: ‘Oh! let her come into the drawing-room after\ndinner; and request Miss Eyre to accompany her.’”\n“Yes; he said that from mere politeness: I need not go, I am sure,” I\nanswered.\n“Well, I observed to him that as you were unused to company, I did not\nthink you would like appearing before so gay a party—all strangers; and\nhe replied, in his quick way—‘Nonsense! If she objects, tell her it is\nmy particular wish; and if she resists, say I shall come and fetch her\nin case of contumacy.’”\n“I will not give him that trouble,” I answered. “I will go, if no\nbetter may be; but I don’t like it. Shall you be there, Mrs. Fairfax?”\n“No; I pleaded off, and he admitted my plea. I’ll tell you how to\nmanage so as to avoid the embarrassment of making a formal entrance,\nwhich is the most disagreeable part of the business. You must go into\nthe drawing-room while it is empty, before the ladies leave the\ndinner-table; choose your seat in any quiet nook you like; you need not\nstay long after the gentlemen come in, unless you please: just let Mr.\nRochester see you are there and then slip away—nobody will notice you.”\n“Will these people remain long, do you think?”\n“Perhaps two or three weeks, certainly not more. After the Easter\nrecess, Sir George Lynn, who was lately elected member for Millcote,\nwill have to go up to town and take his seat; I daresay Mr. Rochester\nwill accompany him: it surprises me that he has already made so\nprotracted a stay at Thornfield.”\nIt was with some trepidation that I perceived the hour approach when I\nwas to repair with my charge to the drawing-room. Adèle had been in a\nstate of ecstasy all day, after hearing she was to be presented to the\nladies in the evening; and it was not till Sophie commenced the\noperation of dressing her that she sobered down. Then the importance of\nthe process quickly steadied her, and by the time she had her curls\narranged in well-smoothed, drooping clusters, her pink satin frock put\non, her long sash tied, and her lace mittens adjusted, she looked as\ngrave as any judge. No need to warn her not to disarrange her attire:\nwhen she was dressed, she sat demurely down in her little chair, taking\ncare previously to lift up the satin skirt for fear she should crease\nit, and assured me she would not stir thence till I was ready. This I\nquickly was: my best dress (the silver-grey one, purchased for Miss\nTemple’s wedding, and never worn since) was soon put on; my hair was\nsoon smoothed; my sole ornament, the pearl brooch, soon assumed. We\ndescended.\nFortunately there was another entrance to the drawing-room than that\nthrough the saloon where they were all seated at dinner. We found the\napartment vacant; a large fire burning silently on the marble hearth,\nand wax candles shining in bright solitude, amid the exquisite flowers\nwith which the tables were adorned. The crimson curtain hung before the\narch: slight as was the separation this drapery formed from the party\nin the adjoining saloon, they spoke in so low a key that nothing of\ntheir conversation could be distinguished beyond a soothing murmur.\nAdèle, who appeared to be still under the influence of a most\nsolemnising impression, sat down, without a word, on the footstool I\npointed out to her. I retired to a window-seat, and taking a book from\na table near, endeavoured to read. Adèle brought her stool to my feet;\nere long she touched my knee.\n“What is it, Adèle?”\n“Est-ce que je ne puis pas prendre une seule de ces fleurs magnifiques,\nmademoiselle? Seulement pour completer ma toilette.”\n“You think too much of your ‘toilette,’ Adèle: but you may have a\nflower.” And I took a rose from a vase and fastened it in her sash. She\nsighed a sigh of ineffable satisfaction, as if her cup of happiness\nwere now full. I turned my face away to conceal a smile I could not\nsuppress: there was something ludicrous as well as painful in the\nlittle Parisienne’s earnest and innate devotion to matters of dress.\nA soft sound of rising now became audible; the curtain was swept back\nfrom the arch; through it appeared the dining-room, with its lit lustre\npouring down light on the silver and glass of a magnificent\ndessert-service covering a long table; a band of ladies stood in the\nopening; they entered, and the curtain fell behind them.\nThere were but eight; yet, somehow, as they flocked in, they gave the\nimpression of a much larger number. Some of them were very tall; many\nwere dressed in white; and all had a sweeping amplitude of array that\nseemed to magnify their persons as a mist magnifies the moon. I rose\nand curtseyed to them: one or two bent their heads in return, the\nothers only stared at me.\nThey dispersed about the room, reminding me, by the lightness and\nbuoyancy of their movements, of a flock of white plumy birds. Some of\nthem threw themselves in half-reclining positions on the sofas and\nottomans: some bent over the tables and examined the flowers and books:\nthe rest gathered in a group round the fire: all talked in a low but\nclear tone which seemed habitual to them. I knew their names\nafterwards, and may as well mention them now.\nFirst, there was Mrs. Eshton and two of her daughters. She had\nevidently been a handsome woman, and was well preserved still. Of her\ndaughters, the eldest, Amy, was rather little: naïve, and child-like in\nface and manner, and piquant in form; her white muslin dress and blue\nsash became her well. The second, Louisa, was taller and more elegant\nin figure; with a very pretty face, of that order the French term\n_minois chiffoné_: both sisters were fair as lilies.\nLady Lynn was a large and stout personage of about forty, very erect,\nvery haughty-looking, richly dressed in a satin robe of changeful\nsheen: her dark hair shone glossily under the shade of an azure plume,\nand within the circlet of a band of gems.\nMrs. Colonel Dent was less showy; but, I thought, more lady-like. She\nhad a slight figure, a pale, gentle face, and fair hair. Her black\nsatin dress, her scarf of rich foreign lace, and her pearl ornaments,\npleased me better than the rainbow radiance of the titled dame.\nBut the three most distinguished—partly, perhaps, because the tallest\nfigures of the band—were the Dowager Lady Ingram and her daughters,\nBlanche and Mary. They were all three of the loftiest stature of women.\nThe Dowager might be between forty and fifty: her shape was still fine;\nher hair (by candle-light at least) still black; her teeth, too, were\nstill apparently perfect. Most people would have termed her a splendid\nwoman of her age: and so she was, no doubt, physically speaking; but\nthen there was an expression of almost insupportable haughtiness in her\nbearing and countenance. She had Roman features and a double chin,\ndisappearing into a throat like a pillar: these features appeared to me\nnot only inflated and darkened, but even furrowed with pride; and the\nchin was sustained by the same principle, in a position of almost\npreternatural erectness. She had, likewise, a fierce and a hard eye: it\nreminded me of Mrs. Reed’s; she mouthed her words in speaking; her\nvoice was deep, its inflections very pompous, very dogmatical,—very\nintolerable, in short. A crimson velvet robe, and a shawl turban of\nsome gold-wrought Indian fabric, invested her (I suppose she thought)\nwith a truly imperial dignity.\nBlanche and Mary were of equal stature,—straight and tall as poplars.\nMary was too slim for her height, but Blanche was moulded like a Dian.\nI regarded her, of course, with special interest. First, I wished to\nsee whether her appearance accorded with Mrs. Fairfax’s description;\nsecondly, whether it at all resembled the fancy miniature I had painted\nof her; and thirdly—it will out!—whether it were such as I should fancy\nlikely to suit Mr. Rochester’s taste.\nAs far as person went, she answered point for point, both to my picture\nand Mrs. Fairfax’s description. The noble bust, the sloping shoulders,\nthe graceful neck, the dark eyes and black ringlets were all there;—but\nher face? Her face was like her mother’s; a youthful unfurrowed\nlikeness: the same low brow, the same high features, the same pride. It\nwas not, however, so saturnine a pride! she laughed continually; her\nlaugh was satirical, and so was the habitual expression of her arched\nand haughty lip.\nGenius is said to be self-conscious. I cannot tell whether Miss Ingram\nwas a genius, but she was self-conscious—remarkably self-conscious\nindeed. She entered into a discourse on botany with the gentle Mrs.\nDent. It seemed Mrs. Dent had not studied that science: though, as she\nsaid, she liked flowers, “especially wild ones;” Miss Ingram had, and\nshe ran over its vocabulary with an air. I presently perceived she was\n(what is vernacularly termed) _trailing_ Mrs. Dent; that is, playing on\nher ignorance; her _trail_ might be clever, but it was decidedly not\ngood-natured. She played: her execution was brilliant; she sang: her\nvoice was fine; she talked French apart to her mamma; and she talked it\nwell, with fluency and with a good accent.\nMary had a milder and more open countenance than Blanche; softer\nfeatures too, and a skin some shades fairer (Miss Ingram was dark as a\nSpaniard)—but Mary was deficient in life: her face lacked expression,\nher eye lustre; she had nothing to say, and having once taken her seat,\nremained fixed like a statue in its niche. The sisters were both\nattired in spotless white.\nAnd did I now think Miss Ingram such a choice as Mr. Rochester would be\nlikely to make? I could not tell—I did not know his taste in female\nbeauty. If he liked the majestic, she was the very type of majesty:\nthen she was accomplished, sprightly. Most gentlemen would admire her,\nI thought; and that he _did_ admire her, I already seemed to have\nobtained proof: to remove the last shade of doubt, it remained but to\nsee them together.\nYou are not to suppose, reader, that Adèle has all this time been\nsitting motionless on the stool at my feet: no; when the ladies\nentered, she rose, advanced to meet them, made a stately reverence, and\nsaid with gravity—\n“Bon jour, mesdames.”\nAnd Miss Ingram had looked down at her with a mocking air, and\nexclaimed, “Oh, what a little puppet!”\nLady Lynn had remarked, “It is Mr. Rochester’s ward, I suppose—the\nlittle French girl he was speaking of.”\nMrs. Dent had kindly taken her hand, and given her a kiss. Amy and\nLouisa Eshton had cried out simultaneously—\n“What a love of a child!”\nAnd then they had called her to a sofa, where she now sat, ensconced\nbetween them, chattering alternately in French and broken English;\nabsorbing not only the young ladies’ attention, but that of Mrs. Eshton\nand Lady Lynn, and getting spoilt to her heart’s content.\nAt last coffee is brought in, and the gentlemen are summoned. I sit in\nthe shade—if any shade there be in this brilliantly-lit apartment; the\nwindow-curtain half hides me. Again the arch yawns; they come. The\ncollective appearance of the gentlemen, like that of the ladies, is\nvery imposing: they are all costumed in black; most of them are tall,\nsome young. Henry and Frederick Lynn are very dashing sparks indeed;\nand Colonel Dent is a fine soldierly man. Mr. Eshton, the magistrate of\nthe district, is gentleman-like: his hair is quite white, his eyebrows\nand whiskers still dark, which gives him something of the appearance of\na “père noble de théâtre.” Lord Ingram, like his sisters, is very tall;\nlike them, also, he is handsome; but he shares Mary’s apathetic and\nlistless look: he seems to have more length of limb than vivacity of\nblood or vigour of brain.\nAnd where is Mr. Rochester?\nHe comes in last: I am not looking at the arch, yet I see him enter. I\ntry to concentrate my attention on those netting-needles, on the meshes\nof the purse I am forming—I wish to think only of the work I have in my\nhands, to see only the silver beads and silk threads that lie in my\nlap; whereas, I distinctly behold his figure, and I inevitably recall\nthe moment when I last saw it; just after I had rendered him, what he\ndeemed, an essential service, and he, holding my hand, and looking down\non my face, surveyed me with eyes that revealed a heart full and eager\nto overflow; in whose emotions I had a part. How near had I approached\nhim at that moment! What had occurred since, calculated to change his\nand my relative positions? Yet now, how distant, how far estranged we\nwere! So far estranged, that I did not expect him to come and speak to\nme. I did not wonder, when, without looking at me, he took a seat at\nthe other side of the room, and began conversing with some of the\nladies.\nNo sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I\nmight gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn\ninvoluntarily to his face; I could not keep their lids under control:\nthey would rise, and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an\nacute pleasure in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold,\nwith a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing\nman might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned,\nyet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.\nMost true is it that “beauty is in the eye of the gazer.” My master’s\ncolourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows,\ndeep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth,—all energy, decision,\nwill,—were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than\nbeautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite\nmastered me,—that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them\nin his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought\nhard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and\nnow, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived,\ngreen and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.\nI compared him with his guests. What was the gallant grace of the\nLynns, the languid elegance of Lord Ingram,—even the military\ndistinction of Colonel Dent, contrasted with his look of native pith\nand genuine power? I had no sympathy in their appearance, their\nexpression: yet I could imagine that most observers would call them\nattractive, handsome, imposing; while they would pronounce Mr.\nRochester at once harsh-featured and melancholy-looking. I saw them\nsmile, laugh—it was nothing; the light of the candles had as much soul\nin it as their smile; the tinkle of the bell as much significance as\ntheir laugh. I saw Mr. Rochester smile:—his stern features softened;\nhis eye grew both brilliant and gentle, its ray both searching and\nsweet. He was talking, at the moment, to Louisa and Amy Eshton. I\nwondered to see them receive with calm that look which seemed to me so\npenetrating: I expected their eyes to fall, their colour to rise under\nit; yet I was glad when I found they were in no sense moved. “He is not\nto them what he is to me,” I thought: “he is not of their kind. I\nbelieve he is of mine;—I am sure he is—I feel akin to him—I understand\nthe language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth\nsever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood\nand nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him. Did I say, a few days\nsince, that I had nothing to do with him but to receive my salary at\nhis hands? Did I forbid myself to think of him in any other light than\nas a paymaster? Blasphemy against nature! Every good, true, vigorous\nfeeling I have gathers impulsively round him. I know I must conceal my\nsentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care\nmuch for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I\nhave his force to influence, and his spell to attract; I mean only that\nI have certain tastes and feelings in common with him. I must, then,\nrepeat continually that we are for ever sundered:—and yet, while I\nbreathe and think, I must love him.”\nCoffee is handed. The ladies, since the gentlemen entered, have become\nlively as larks; conversation waxes brisk and merry. Colonel Dent and\nMr. Eshton argue on politics; their wives listen. The two proud\ndowagers, Lady Lynn and Lady Ingram, confabulate together. Sir\nGeorge—whom, by-the-bye, I have forgotten to describe,—a very big, and\nvery fresh-looking country gentleman, stands before their sofa,\ncoffee-cup in hand, and occasionally puts in a word. Mr. Frederick Lynn\nhas taken a seat beside Mary Ingram, and is showing her the engravings\nof a splendid volume: she looks, smiles now and then, but apparently\nsays little. The tall and phlegmatic Lord Ingram leans with folded arms\non the chair-back of the little and lively Amy Eshton; she glances up\nat him, and chatters like a wren: she likes him better than she does\nMr. Rochester. Henry Lynn has taken possession of an ottoman at the\nfeet of Louisa: Adèle shares it with him: he is trying to talk French\nwith her, and Louisa laughs at his blunders. With whom will Blanche\nIngram pair? She is standing alone at the table, bending gracefully\nover an album. She seems waiting to be sought; but she will not wait\ntoo long: she herself selects a mate.\nMr. Rochester, having quitted the Eshtons, stands on the hearth as\nsolitary as she stands by the table: she confronts him, taking her\nstation on the opposite side of the mantelpiece.\n“Mr. Rochester, I thought you were not fond of children?”\n“Nor am I.”\n“Then, what induced you to take charge of such a little doll as that?”\n(pointing to Adèle). “Where did you pick her up?”\n“I did not pick her up; she was left on my hands.”\n“You should have sent her to school.”\n“I could not afford it: schools are so dear.”\n“Why, I suppose you have a governess for her: I saw a person with her\njust now—is she gone? Oh, no! there she is still, behind the\nwindow-curtain. You pay her, of course; I should think it quite as\nexpensive,—more so; for you have them both to keep in addition.”\nI feared—or should I say, hoped?—the allusion to me would make Mr.\nRochester glance my way; and I involuntarily shrank farther into the\nshade: but he never turned his eyes.\n“I have not considered the subject,” said he indifferently, looking\nstraight before him.\n“No, you men never do consider economy and common sense. You should\nhear mama on the chapter of governesses: Mary and I have had, I should\nthink, a dozen at least in our day; half of them detestable and the\nrest ridiculous, and all incubi—were they not, mama?”\n“Did you speak, my own?”\nThe young lady thus claimed as the dowager’s special property,\nreiterated her question with an explanation.\n“My dearest, don’t mention governesses; the word makes me nervous. I\nhave suffered a martyrdom from their incompetency and caprice. I thank\nHeaven I have now done with them!”\nMrs. Dent here bent over to the pious lady and whispered something in\nher ear; I suppose, from the answer elicited, it was a reminder that\none of the anathematised race was present.\n“Tant pis!” said her Ladyship, “I hope it may do her good!” Then, in a\nlower tone, but still loud enough for me to hear, “I noticed her; I am\na judge of physiognomy, and in hers I see all the faults of her class.”\n“What are they, madam?” inquired Mr. Rochester aloud.\n“I will tell you in your private ear,” replied she, wagging her turban\nthree times with portentous significancy.\n“But my curiosity will be past its appetite; it craves food now.”\n“Ask Blanche; she is nearer you than I.”\n“Oh, don’t refer him to me, mama! I have just one word to say of the\nwhole tribe; they are a nuisance. Not that I ever suffered much from\nthem; I took care to turn the tables. What tricks Theodore and I used\nto play on our Miss Wilsons, and Mrs. Greys, and Madame Jouberts! Mary\nwas always too sleepy to join in a plot with spirit. The best fun was\nwith Madame Joubert: Miss Wilson was a poor sickly thing, lachrymose\nand low-spirited, not worth the trouble of vanquishing, in short; and\nMrs. Grey was coarse and insensible; no blow took effect on her. But\npoor Madame Joubert! I see her yet in her raging passions, when we had\ndriven her to extremities—spilt our tea, crumbled our bread and butter,\ntossed our books up to the ceiling, and played a charivari with the\nruler and desk, the fender and fire-irons. Theodore, do you remember\nthose merry days?”\n“Yaas, to be sure I do,” drawled Lord Ingram; “and the poor old stick\nused to cry out, ‘Oh you villains childs!’—and then we sermonised her on\nthe presumption of attempting to teach such clever blades as we were,\nwhen she was herself so ignorant.”\n“We did; and, Tedo, you know, I helped you in prosecuting (or\npersecuting) your tutor, whey-faced Mr. Vining—the parson in the pip,\nas we used to call him. He and Miss Wilson took the liberty of falling\nin love with each other—at least Tedo and I thought so; we surprised\nsundry tender glances and sighs which we interpreted as tokens of ‘la\nbelle passion,’ and I promise you the public soon had the benefit of\nour discovery; we employed it as a sort of lever to hoist our\ndead-weights from the house. Dear mama, there, as soon as she got an\ninkling of the business, found out that it was of an immoral tendency.\nDid you not, my lady-mother?”\n“Certainly, my best. And I was quite right: depend on that: there are a\nthousand reasons why liaisons between governesses and tutors should\nnever be tolerated a moment in any well-regulated house; firstly—”\n“Oh, gracious, mama! Spare us the enumeration! _Au reste_, we all know\nthem: danger of bad example to innocence of childhood; distractions and\nconsequent neglect of duty on the part of the attached—mutual alliance\nand reliance; confidence thence resulting—insolence accompanying—mutiny\nand general blow-up. Am I right, Baroness Ingram, of Ingram Park?”\n“My lily-flower, you are right now, as always.”\n“Then no more need be said: change the subject.”\nAmy Eshton, not hearing or not heeding this dictum, joined in with her\nsoft, infantine tone: “Louisa and I used to quiz our governess too; but\nshe was such a good creature, she would bear anything: nothing put her\nout. She was never cross with us; was she, Louisa?”\n“No, never: we might do what we pleased; ransack her desk and her\nworkbox, and turn her drawers inside out; and she was so good-natured,\nshe would give us anything we asked for.”\n“I suppose, now,” said Miss Ingram, curling her lip sarcastically, “we\nshall have an abstract of the memoirs of all the governesses extant: in\norder to avert such a visitation, I again move the introduction of a\nnew topic. Mr. Rochester, do you second my motion?”\n“Madam, I support you on this point, as on every other.”\n“Then on me be the onus of bringing it forward. Signior Eduardo, are\nyou in voice to-night?”\n“Donna Bianca, if you command it, I will be.”\n“Then, signior, I lay on you my sovereign behest to furbish up your\nlungs and other vocal organs, as they will be wanted on my royal\nservice.”\n“Who would not be the Rizzio of so divine a Mary?”\n“A fig for Rizzio!” cried she, tossing her head with all its curls, as\nshe moved to the piano. “It is my opinion the fiddler David must have\nbeen an insipid sort of fellow; I like black Bothwell better: to my\nmind a man is nothing without a spice of the devil in him; and history\nmay say what it will of James Hepburn, but I have a notion, he was just\nthe sort of wild, fierce, bandit hero whom I could have consented to\ngift with my hand.”\n“Gentlemen, you hear! Now which of you most resembles Bothwell?” cried\nMr. Rochester.\n“I should say the preference lies with you,” responded Colonel Dent.\n“On my honour, I am much obliged to you,” was the reply.\nMiss Ingram, who had now seated herself with proud grace at the piano,\nspreading out her snowy robes in queenly amplitude, commenced a\nbrilliant prelude; talking meantime. She appeared to be on her high\nhorse to-night; both her words and her air seemed intended to excite\nnot only the admiration, but the amazement of her auditors: she was\nevidently bent on striking them as something very dashing and daring\nindeed.\n“Oh, I am so sick of the young men of the present day!” exclaimed she,\nrattling away at the instrument. “Poor, puny things, not fit to stir a\nstep beyond papa’s park gates: nor to go even so far without mama’s\npermission and guardianship! Creatures so absorbed in care about their\npretty faces, and their white hands, and their small feet; as if a man\nhad anything to do with beauty! As if loveliness were not the special\nprerogative of woman—her legitimate appanage and heritage! I grant an\nugly _woman_ is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the\n_gentlemen_, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and\nvalour: let their motto be:—Hunt, shoot, and fight: the rest is not\nworth a fillip. Such should be my device, were I a man.”\n“Whenever I marry,” she continued after a pause which none interrupted,\n“I am resolved my husband shall not be a rival, but a foil to me. I\nwill suffer no competitor near the throne; I shall exact an undivided\nhomage: his devotions shall not be shared between me and the shape he\nsees in his mirror. Mr. Rochester, now sing, and I will play for you.”\n“I am all obedience,” was the response.\n“Here then is a Corsair-song. Know that I doat on Corsairs; and for\nthat reason, sing it _con spirito_.”\n“Commands from Miss Ingram’s lips would put spirit into a mug of milk\nand water.”\n“Take care, then: if you don’t please me, I will shame you by showing\nhow such things _should_ be done.”\n“That is offering a premium on incapacity: I shall now endeavour to\nfail.”\n“Gardez-vous en bien! If you err wilfully, I shall devise a\nproportionate punishment.”\n“Miss Ingram ought to be clement, for she has it in her power to\ninflict a chastisement beyond mortal endurance.”\n“Ha! explain!” commanded the lady.\n“Pardon me, madam: no need of explanation; your own fine sense must\ninform you that one of your frowns would be a sufficient substitute for\ncapital punishment.”\n“Sing!” said she, and again touching the piano, she commenced an\naccompaniment in spirited style.\n“Now is my time to slip away,” thought I: but the tones that then\nsevered the air arrested me. Mrs. Fairfax had said Mr. Rochester\npossessed a fine voice: he did—a mellow, powerful bass, into which he\nthrew his own feeling, his own force; finding a way through the ear to\nthe heart, and there waking sensation strangely. I waited till the last\ndeep and full vibration had expired—till the tide of talk, checked an\ninstant, had resumed its flow; I then quitted my sheltered corner and\nmade my exit by the side-door, which was fortunately near. Thence a\nnarrow passage led into the hall: in crossing it, I perceived my sandal\nwas loose; I stopped to tie it, kneeling down for that purpose on the\nmat at the foot of the staircase. I heard the dining-room door unclose;\na gentleman came out; rising hastily, I stood face to face with him: it\nwas Mr. Rochester.\n“How do you do?” he asked.\n“I am very well, sir.”\n“Why did you not come and speak to me in the room?”\nI thought I might have retorted the question on him who put it: but I\nwould not take that freedom. I answered—\n“I did not wish to disturb you, as you seemed engaged, sir.”\n“What have you been doing during my absence?”\n“Nothing particular; teaching Adèle as usual.”\n“And getting a good deal paler than you were—as I saw at first sight.\nWhat is the matter?”\n“Nothing at all, sir.”\n“Did you take any cold that night you half drowned me?”\n“Not the least.”\n“Return to the drawing-room: you are deserting too early.”\n“I am tired, sir.”\nHe looked at me for a minute.\n“And a little depressed,” he said. “What about? Tell me.”\n“Nothing—nothing, sir. I am not depressed.”\n“But I affirm that you are: so much depressed that a few more words\nwould bring tears to your eyes—indeed, they are there now, shining and\nswimming; and a bead has slipped from the lash and fallen on to the\nflag. If I had time, and was not in mortal dread of some prating prig\nof a servant passing, I would know what all this means. Well, to-night\nI excuse you; but understand that so long as my visitors stay, I expect\nyou to appear in the drawing-room every evening; it is my wish; don’t\nneglect it. Now go, and send Sophie for Adèle. Good-night, my—” He\nstopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.\n', 'Merry days were these at Thornfield Hall; and busy days too: how\ndifferent from the first three months of stillness, monotony, and\nsolitude I had passed beneath its roof! All sad feelings seemed now\ndriven from the house, all gloomy associations forgotten: there was\nlife everywhere, movement all day long. You could not now traverse the\ngallery, once so hushed, nor enter the front chambers, once so\ntenantless, without encountering a smart lady’s-maid or a dandy valet.\nThe kitchen, the butler’s pantry, the servants’ hall, the entrance\nhall, were equally alive; and the saloons were only left void and still\nwhen the blue sky and halcyon sunshine of the genial spring weather\ncalled their occupants out into the grounds. Even when that weather was\nbroken, and continuous rain set in for some days, no damp seemed cast\nover enjoyment: indoor amusements only became more lively and varied,\nin consequence of the stop put to outdoor gaiety.\nI wondered what they were going to do the first evening a change of\nentertainment was proposed: they spoke of “playing charades,” but in my\nignorance I did not understand the term. The servants were called in,\nthe dining-room tables wheeled away, the lights otherwise disposed, the\nchairs placed in a semicircle opposite the arch. While Mr. Rochester\nand the other gentlemen directed these alterations, the ladies were\nrunning up and down stairs ringing for their maids. Mrs. Fairfax was\nsummoned to give information respecting the resources of the house in\nshawls, dresses, draperies of any kind; and certain wardrobes of the\nthird storey were ransacked, and their contents, in the shape of\nbrocaded and hooped petticoats, satin sacques, black modes, lace\nlappets, &c., were brought down in armfuls by the abigails; then a\nselection was made, and such things as were chosen were carried to the\nboudoir within the drawing-room.\nMeantime, Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him, and\nwas selecting certain of their number to be of his party. “Miss Ingram\nis mine, of course,” said he: afterwards he named the two Misses\nEshton, and Mrs. Dent. He looked at me: I happened to be near him, as I\nhad been fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent’s bracelet, which had got\nloose.\n“Will you play?” he asked. I shook my head. He did not insist, which I\nrather feared he would have done; he allowed me to return quietly to my\nusual seat.\nHe and his aids now withdrew behind the curtain: the other party, which\nwas headed by Colonel Dent, sat down on the crescent of chairs. One of\nthe gentlemen, Mr. Eshton, observing me, seemed to propose that I\nshould be asked to join them; but Lady Ingram instantly negatived the\nnotion.\n“No,” I heard her say: “she looks too stupid for any game of the sort.”\nEre long a bell tinkled, and the curtain drew up. Within the arch, the\nbulky figure of Sir George Lynn, whom Mr. Rochester had likewise\nchosen, was seen enveloped in a white sheet: before him, on a table,\nlay open a large book; and at his side stood Amy Eshton, draped in Mr.\nRochester’s cloak, and holding a book in her hand. Somebody, unseen,\nrang the bell merrily; then Adèle (who had insisted on being one of her\nguardian’s party), bounded forward, scattering round her the contents\nof a basket of flowers she carried on her arm. Then appeared the\nmagnificent figure of Miss Ingram, clad in white, a long veil on her\nhead, and a wreath of roses round her brow; by her side walked Mr.\nRochester, and together they drew near the table. They knelt; while\nMrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton, dressed also in white, took up their\nstations behind them. A ceremony followed, in dumb show, in which it\nwas easy to recognise the pantomime of a marriage. At its termination,\nColonel Dent and his party consulted in whispers for two minutes, then\nthe Colonel called out—\n“Bride!” Mr. Rochester bowed, and the curtain fell.\nA considerable interval elapsed before it again rose. Its second rising\ndisplayed a more elaborately prepared scene than the last. The\ndrawing-room, as I have before observed, was raised two steps above the\ndining-room, and on the top of the upper step, placed a yard or two\nback within the room, appeared a large marble basin, which I recognised\nas an ornament of the conservatory—where it usually stood, surrounded\nby exotics, and tenanted by gold fish—and whence it must have been\ntransported with some trouble, on account of its size and weight.\nSeated on the carpet, by the side of this basin, was seen Mr.\nRochester, costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head. His dark eyes\nand swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the costume exactly: he\nlooked the very model of an Eastern emir, an agent or a victim of the\nbowstring. Presently advanced into view Miss Ingram. She, too, was\nattired in oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the\nwaist: an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her\nbeautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised in the act of\nsupporting a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head. Both her cast of\nform and feature, her complexion and her general air, suggested the\nidea of some Israelitish princess of the patriarchal days; and such was\ndoubtless the character she intended to represent.\nShe approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her pitcher;\nshe again lifted it to her head. The personage on the well-brink now\nseemed to accost her; to make some request:—“She hasted, let down her\npitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink.” From the bosom of his robe\nhe then produced a casket, opened it and showed magnificent bracelets\nand earrings; she acted astonishment and admiration; kneeling, he laid\nthe treasure at her feet; incredulity and delight were expressed by her\nlooks and gestures; the stranger fastened the bracelets on her arms and\nthe rings in her ears. It was Eliezer and Rebecca: the camels only were\nwanting.\nThe divining party again laid their heads together: apparently they\ncould not agree about the word or syllable the scene illustrated.\nColonel Dent, their spokesman, demanded “the tableau of the whole;”\nwhereupon the curtain again descended.\nOn its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed;\nthe rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort of dark and\ncoarse drapery. The marble basin was removed; in its place, stood a\ndeal table and a kitchen chair: these objects were visible by a very\ndim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles being all\nextinguished.\nAmidst this sordid scene, sat a man with his clenched hands resting on\nhis knees, and his eyes bent on the ground. I knew Mr. Rochester;\nthough the begrimed face, the disordered dress (his coat hanging loose\nfrom one arm, as if it had been almost torn from his back in a\nscuffle), the desperate and scowling countenance, the rough, bristling\nhair might well have disguised him. As he moved, a chain clanked; to\nhis wrists were attached fetters.\n“Bridewell!” exclaimed Colonel Dent, and the charade was solved.\nA sufficient interval having elapsed for the performers to resume their\nordinary costume, they re-entered the dining-room. Mr. Rochester led in\nMiss Ingram; she was complimenting him on his acting.\n“Do you know,” said she, “that, of the three characters, I liked you in\nthe last best? Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier, what a\ngallant gentleman-highwayman you would have made!”\n“Is all the soot washed from my face?” he asked, turning it towards\nher.\n“Alas! yes: the more’s the pity! Nothing could be more becoming to your\ncomplexion than that ruffian’s rouge.”\n“You would like a hero of the road then?”\n“An English hero of the road would be the next best thing to an Italian\nbandit; and that could only be surpassed by a Levantine pirate.”\n“Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were married an hour\nsince, in the presence of all these witnesses.” She giggled, and her\ncolour rose.\n“Now, Dent,” continued Mr. Rochester, “it is your turn.” And as the\nother party withdrew, he and his band took the vacated seats. Miss\nIngram placed herself at her leader’s right hand; the other diviners\nfilled the chairs on each side of him and her. I did not now watch the\nactors; I no longer waited with interest for the curtain to rise; my\nattention was absorbed by the spectators; my eyes, erewhile fixed on\nthe arch, were now irresistibly attracted to the semicircle of chairs.\nWhat charade Colonel Dent and his party played, what word they chose,\nhow they acquitted themselves, I no longer remember; but I still see\nthe consultation which followed each scene: I see Mr. Rochester turn to\nMiss Ingram, and Miss Ingram to him; I see her incline her head towards\nhim, till the jetty curls almost touch his shoulder and wave against\nhis cheek; I hear their mutual whisperings; I recall their interchanged\nglances; and something even of the feeling roused by the spectacle\nreturns in memory at this moment.\nI have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I\ncould not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to\nnotice me—because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would\nnever once turn his eyes in my direction—because I saw all his\nattentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with\nthe hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious\neye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object\ntoo mean to merit observation. I could not unlove him, because I felt\nsure he would soon marry this very lady—because I read daily in her a\nproud security in his intentions respecting her—because I witnessed\nhourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing\nrather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness,\ncaptivating, and in its very pride, irresistible.\nThere was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though\nmuch to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to engender\njealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a\nwoman in Miss Ingram’s. But I was not jealous: or very rarely;—the\nnature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word. Miss\nIngram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the\nfeeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very\nshowy, but she was not genuine: she had a fine person, many brilliant\nattainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing\nbloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted\nby its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used to\nrepeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, an\nopinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did\nnot know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were\nnot in her. Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to\na spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adèle: pushing\nher away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach\nher; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with\ncoldness and acrimony. Other eyes besides mine watched these\nmanifestations of character—watched them closely, keenly, shrewdly.\nYes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his\nintended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity—this\nguardedness of his—this perfect, clear consciousness of his fair one’s\ndefects—this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her,\nthat my ever-torturing pain arose.\nI saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons,\nbecause her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had not given\nher his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from\nhim that treasure. This was the point—this was where the nerve was\ntouched and teased—this was where the fever was sustained and fed: _she\ncould not charm him_.\nIf she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and\nsincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face,\nturned to the wall, and (figuratively) have died to them. If Miss\nIngram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour,\nkindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two\ntigers—jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I\nshould have admired her—acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for\nthe rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper\nwould have been my admiration—the more truly tranquil my quiescence.\nBut as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram’s efforts at\nfascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated failure—herself\nunconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft\nlaunched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success,\nwhen her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what\nshe wished to allure—to witness _this_, was to be at once under\nceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.\nBecause, when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows\nthat continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester’s breast and fell\nharmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have\nquivered keen in his proud heart—have called love into his stern eye,\nand softness into his sardonic face; or, better still, without weapons\na silent conquest might have been won.\n“Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw so\nnear to him?” I asked myself. “Surely she cannot truly like him, or not\nlike him with true affection! If she did, she need not coin her smiles\nso lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so\nelaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she might, by\nmerely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and looking less, get\nnigher his heart. I have seen in his face a far different expression\nfrom that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting\nhim; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious\narts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it—to answer\nwhat he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without\ngrimace—and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed\none like a fostering sunbeam. How will she manage to please him when\nthey are married? I do not think she will manage it; and yet it might\nbe managed; and his wife might, I verily believe, be the very happiest\nwoman the sun shines on.”\nI have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester’s project of\nmarrying for interest and connections. It surprised me when I first\ndiscovered that such was his intention: I had thought him a man\nunlikely to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his choice of a\nwife; but the longer I considered the position, education, &c., of the\nparties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming either him or\nMiss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and principles instilled\ninto them, doubtless, from their childhood. All their class held these\nprinciples: I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as\nI could not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him,\nI would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very\nobviousness of the advantages to the husband’s own happiness offered by\nthis plan convinced me that there must be arguments against its general\nadoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the\nworld would act as I wished to act.\nBut in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my\nmaster: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a\nsharp look-out. It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of\nhis character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just\nweighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The\nsarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once,\nwere only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was\npungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid. And\nas for the vague something—was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a\ndesigning or a desponding expression?—that opened upon a careful\nobserver, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could\nfathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used\nto make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst\nvolcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and\nseen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with\nthrobbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to\nshun, I longed only to dare—to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram\nhappy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure,\nexplore its secrets and analyse their nature.\nMeantime, while I thought only of my master and his future bride—saw\nonly them, heard only their discourse, and considered only their\nmovements of importance—the rest of the party were occupied with their\nown separate interests and pleasures. The Ladies Lynn and Ingram\ncontinued to consort in solemn conferences, where they nodded their two\nturbans at each other, and held up their four hands in confronting\ngestures of surprise, or mystery, or horror, according to the theme on\nwhich their gossip ran, like a pair of magnified puppets. Mild Mrs.\nDent talked with good-natured Mrs. Eshton; and the two sometimes\nbestowed a courteous word or smile on me. Sir George Lynn, Colonel\nDent, and Mr. Eshton discussed politics, or county affairs, or justice\nbusiness. Lord Ingram flirted with Amy Eshton; Louisa played and sang\nto and with one of the Messrs. Lynn; and Mary Ingram listened languidly\nto the gallant speeches of the other. Sometimes all, as with one\nconsent, suspended their by-play to observe and listen to the principal\nactors: for, after all, Mr. Rochester and—because closely connected\nwith him—Miss Ingram were the life and soul of the party. If he was\nabsent from the room an hour, a perceptible dulness seemed to steal\nover the spirits of his guests; and his re-entrance was sure to give a\nfresh impulse to the vivacity of conversation.\nThe want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly felt one\nday that he had been summoned to Millcote on business, and was not\nlikely to return till late. The afternoon was wet: a walk the party had\nproposed to take to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched on a common beyond\nHay, was consequently deferred. Some of the gentlemen were gone to the\nstables: the younger ones, together with the younger ladies, were\nplaying billiards in the billiard-room. The dowagers Ingram and Lynn\nsought solace in a quiet game at cards. Blanche Ingram, after having\nrepelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and\nMrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some\nsentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a\nnovel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a\nsofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious\nhours of absence. The room and the house were silent: only now and then\nthe merriment of the billiard-players was heard from above.\nIt was verging on dusk, and the clock had already given warning of the\nhour to dress for dinner, when little Adèle, who knelt by me in the\ndrawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed—\n“Voilà Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!”\nI turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa: the others,\ntoo, looked up from their several occupations; for at the same time a\ncrunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible\non the wet gravel. A post-chaise was approaching.\n“What can possess him to come home in that style?” said Miss Ingram.\n“He rode Mesrour (the black horse), did he not, when he went out? and\nPilot was with him:—what has he done with the animals?”\nAs she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments so\nnear the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking\nof my spine: in her eagerness she did not observe me at first, but when\nshe did, she curled her lip and moved to another casement. The\npost-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman\nalighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Rochester; it\nwas a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.\n“How provoking!” exclaimed Miss Ingram: “you tiresome monkey!”\n(apostrophising Adèle), “who perched you up in the window to give false\nintelligence?” and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were in\nfault.\nSome parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the new-comer entered.\nHe bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest lady present.\n“It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam,” said he, “when my\nfriend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very long\njourney, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate\nacquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns.”\nHis manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as being\nsomewhat unusual,—not precisely foreign, but still not altogether\nEnglish: his age might be about Mr. Rochester’s,—between thirty and\nforty; his complexion was singularly sallow: otherwise he was a\nfine-looking man, at first sight especially. On closer examination, you\ndetected something in his face that displeased, or rather that failed\nto please. His features were regular, but too relaxed: his eye was\nlarge and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame, vacant\nlife—at least so I thought.\nThe sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party. It was not till\nafter dinner that I saw him again: he then seemed quite at his ease.\nBut I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as\nbeing at the same time unsettled and inanimate. His eye wandered, and\nhad no meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look, such as I\nnever remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not an\nunamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no power\nin that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in that\naquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the low,\neven forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye.\nAs I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of the\ngirandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him—for he occupied an\narm-chair drawn close to the fire, and kept shrinking still nearer, as\nif he were cold, I compared him with Mr. Rochester. I think (with\ndeference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between\na sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the\nrough-coated keen-eyed dog, its guardian.\nHe had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A curious friendship\ntheirs must have been: a pointed illustration, indeed, of the old adage\nthat “extremes meet.”\nTwo or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times\nscraps of their conversation across the room. At first I could not make\nmuch sense of what I heard; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary\nIngram, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that\nreached me at intervals. These last were discussing the stranger; they\nboth called him “a beautiful man.” Louisa said he was “a love of a\ncreature,” and she “adored him;” and Mary instanced his “pretty little\nmouth, and nice nose,” as her ideal of the charming.\n“And what a sweet-tempered forehead he has!” cried Louisa,—“so\nsmooth—none of those frowning irregularities I dislike so much; and\nsuch a placid eye and smile!”\nAnd then, to my great relief, Mr. Henry Lynn summoned them to the other\nside of the room, to settle some point about the deferred excursion to\nHay Common.\nI was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the fire,\nand I presently gathered that the new-comer was called Mr. Mason; then\nI learned that he was but just arrived in England, and that he came\nfrom some hot country: which was the reason, doubtless, his face was so\nsallow, and that he sat so near the hearth, and wore a surtout in the\nhouse. Presently the words Jamaica, Kingston, Spanish Town, indicated\nthe West Indies as his residence; and it was with no little surprise I\ngathered, ere long, that he had there first seen and become acquainted\nwith Mr. Rochester. He spoke of his friend’s dislike of the burning\nheats, the hurricanes, and rainy seasons of that region. I knew Mr.\nRochester had been a traveller: Mrs. Fairfax had said so; but I thought\nthe continent of Europe had bounded his wanderings; till now I had\nnever heard a hint given of visits to more distant shores.\nI was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat\nunexpected one, broke the thread of my musings. Mr. Mason, shivering as\nsome one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the\nfire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still\nshone hot and red. The footman who brought the coal, in going out,\nstopped near Mr. Eshton’s chair, and said something to him in a low\nvoice, of which I heard only the words, “old woman,”—“quite\ntroublesome.”\n“Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not take herself\noff,” replied the magistrate.\n“No—stop!” interrupted Colonel Dent. “Don’t send her away, Eshton; we\nmight turn the thing to account; better consult the ladies.” And\nspeaking aloud, he continued—“Ladies, you talked of going to Hay Common\nto visit the gipsy camp; Sam here says that one of the old Mother\nBunches is in the servants’ hall at this moment, and insists upon being\nbrought in before ‘the quality,’ to tell them their fortunes. Would you\nlike to see her?”\n“Surely, colonel,” cried Lady Ingram, “you would not encourage such a\nlow impostor? Dismiss her, by all means, at once!”\n“But I cannot persuade her to go away, my lady,” said the footman; “nor\ncan any of the servants: Mrs. Fairfax is with her just now, entreating\nher to be gone; but she has taken a chair in the chimney-corner, and\nsays nothing shall stir her from it till she gets leave to come in\nhere.”\n“What does she want?” asked Mrs. Eshton.\n“‘To tell the gentry their fortunes,’ she says, ma’am; and she swears\nshe must and will do it.”\n“What is she like?” inquired the Misses Eshton, in a breath.\n“A shockingly ugly old creature, miss; almost as black as a crock.”\n“Why, she’s a real sorceress!” cried Frederick Lynn. “Let us have her\nin, of course.”\n“To be sure,” rejoined his brother; “it would be a thousand pities to\nthrow away such a chance of fun.”\n“My dear boys, what are you thinking about?” exclaimed Mrs. Lynn.\n“I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent proceeding,”\nchimed in the Dowager Ingram.\n“Indeed, mama, but you can—and will,” pronounced the haughty voice of\nBlanche, as she turned round on the piano-stool; where till now she had\nsat silent, apparently examining sundry sheets of music. “I have a\ncuriosity to hear my fortune told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame\nforward.”\n“My darling Blanche! recollect—”\n“I do—I recollect all you can suggest; and I must have my will—quick,\nSam!”\n“Yes—yes—yes!” cried all the juveniles, both ladies and gentlemen. “Let\nher come—it will be excellent sport!”\nThe footman still lingered. “She looks such a rough one,” said he.\n“Go!” ejaculated Miss Ingram, and the man went.\nExcitement instantly seized the whole party: a running fire of raillery\nand jests was proceeding when Sam returned.\n“She won’t come now,” said he. “She says it’s not her mission to appear\nbefore the ‘vulgar herd’ (them’s her words). I must show her into a\nroom by herself, and then those who wish to consult her must go to her\none by one.”\n“You see now, my queenly Blanche,” began Lady Ingram, “she encroaches.\nBe advised, my angel girl—and—”\n“Show her into the library, of course,” cut in the “angel girl.” “It is\nnot my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either: I mean\nto have her all to myself. Is there a fire in the library?”\n“Yes, ma’am—but she looks such a tinkler.”\n“Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do my bidding.”\nAgain Sam vanished; and mystery, animation, expectation rose to full\nflow once more.\n“She’s ready now,” said the footman, as he reappeared. “She wishes to\nknow who will be her first visitor.”\n“I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies\ngo,” said Colonel Dent.\n“Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming.”\nSam went and returned.\n“She says, sir, that she’ll have no gentlemen; they need not trouble\nthemselves to come near her; nor,” he added, with difficulty\nsuppressing a titter, “any ladies either, except the young, and\nsingle.”\n“By Jove, she has taste!” exclaimed Henry Lynn.\nMiss Ingram rose solemnly: “I go first,” she said, in a tone which\nmight have befitted the leader of a forlorn hope, mounting a breach in\nthe van of his men.\n“Oh, my best! oh, my dearest! pause—reflect!” was her mama’s cry; but\nshe swept past her in stately silence, passed through the door which\nColonel Dent held open, and we heard her enter the library.\nA comparative silence ensued. Lady Ingram thought it “le cas” to wring\nher hands: which she did accordingly. Miss Mary declared she felt, for\nher part, she never dared venture. Amy and Louisa Eshton tittered under\ntheir breath, and looked a little frightened.\nThe minutes passed very slowly: fifteen were counted before the\nlibrary-door again opened. Miss Ingram returned to us through the arch.\nWould she laugh? Would she take it as a joke? All eyes met her with a\nglance of eager curiosity, and she met all eyes with one of rebuff and\ncoldness; she looked neither flurried nor merry: she walked stiffly to\nher seat, and took it in silence.\n“Well, Blanche?” said Lord Ingram.\n“What did she say, sister?” asked Mary.\n“What did you think? How do you feel? Is she a real fortune-teller?”\ndemanded the Misses Eshton.\n“Now, now, good people,” returned Miss Ingram, “don’t press upon me.\nReally your organs of wonder and credulity are easily excited: you\nseem, by the importance of you all—my good mama included—ascribe to\nthis matter, absolutely to believe we have a genuine witch in the\nhouse, who is in close alliance with the old gentleman. I have seen a\ngipsy vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of\npalmistry and told me what such people usually tell. My whim is\ngratified; and now I think Mr. Eshton will do well to put the hag in\nthe stocks to-morrow morning, as he threatened.”\nMiss Ingram took a book, leant back in her chair, and so declined\nfurther conversation. I watched her for nearly half-an-hour: during all\nthat time she never turned a page, and her face grew momently darker,\nmore dissatisfied, and more sourly expressive of disappointment. She\nhad obviously not heard anything to her advantage: and it seemed to me,\nfrom her prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity, that she herself,\nnotwithstanding her professed indifference, attached undue importance\nto whatever revelations had been made her.\nDuring all that time she never turned a page\nMeantime, Mary Ingram, Amy and Louisa Eshton, declared they dared not\ngo alone; and yet they all wished to go. A negotiation was opened\nthrough the medium of the ambassador, Sam; and after much pacing to and\nfro, till, I think, the said Sam’s calves must have ached with the\nexercise, permission was at last, with great difficulty, extorted from\nthe rigorous Sibyl, for the three to wait upon her in a body.\nTheir visit was not so still as Miss Ingram’s had been: we heard\nhysterical giggling and little shrieks proceeding from the library; and\nat the end of about twenty minutes they burst the door open, and came\nrunning across the hall, as if they were half-scared out of their wits.\n“I am sure she is something not right!” they cried, one and all. “She\ntold us such things! She knows all about us!” and they sank breathless\ninto the various seats the gentlemen hastened to bring them.\nPressed for further explanation, they declared she had told them of\nthings they had said and done when they were mere children; described\nbooks and ornaments they had in their boudoirs at home: keepsakes that\ndifferent relations had presented to them. They affirmed that she had\neven divined their thoughts, and had whispered in the ear of each the\nname of the person she liked best in the world, and informed them of\nwhat they most wished for.\nHere the gentlemen interposed with earnest petitions to be further\nenlightened on these two last-named points; but they got only blushes,\nejaculations, tremors, and titters, in return for their importunity.\nThe matrons, meantime, offered vinaigrettes and wielded fans; and again\nand again reiterated the expression of their concern that their warning\nhad not been taken in time; and the elder gentlemen laughed, and the\nyounger urged their services on the agitated fair ones.\nIn the midst of the tumult, and while my eyes and ears were fully\nengaged in the scene before me, I heard a hem close at my elbow: I\nturned, and saw Sam.\n“If you please, miss, the gipsy declares that there is another young\nsingle lady in the room who has not been to her yet, and she swears she\nwill not go till she has seen all. I thought it must be you: there is\nno one else for it. What shall I tell her?”\n“Oh, I will go by all means,” I answered: and I was glad of the\nunexpected opportunity to gratify my much-excited curiosity. I slipped\nout of the room, unobserved by any eye—for the company were gathered in\none mass about the trembling trio just returned—and I closed the door\nquietly behind me.\n“If you like, miss,” said Sam, “I’ll wait in the hall for you; and if\nshe frightens you, just call and I’ll come in.”\n“No, Sam, return to the kitchen: I am not in the least afraid.” Nor was\nI; but I was a good deal interested and excited.\n', 'The library looked tranquil enough as I entered it, and the Sibyl—if\nSibyl she were—was seated snugly enough in an easy-chair at the\nchimney-corner. She had on a red cloak and a black bonnet: or rather, a\nbroad-brimmed gipsy hat, tied down with a striped handkerchief under\nher chin. An extinguished candle stood on the table; she was bending\nover the fire, and seemed reading in a little black book, like a\nprayer-book, by the light of the blaze: she muttered the words to\nherself, as most old women do, while she read; she did not desist\nimmediately on my entrance: it appeared she wished to finish a\nparagraph.\nI stood on the rug and warmed my hands, which were rather cold with\nsitting at a distance from the drawing-room fire. I felt now as\ncomposed as ever I did in my life: there was nothing indeed in the\ngipsy’s appearance to trouble one’s calm. She shut her book and slowly\nlooked up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as\nshe raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and\nblack: elf-locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed\nunder her chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye\nconfronted me at once, with a bold and direct gaze.\n“Well, and you want your fortune told?” she said, in a voice as decided\nas her glance, as harsh as her features.\n“I don’t care about it, mother; you may please yourself: but I ought to\nwarn you, I have no faith.”\n“It’s like your impudence to say so: I expected it of you; I heard it\nin your step as you crossed the threshold.”\n“Did you? You’ve a quick ear.”\n“I have; and a quick eye and a quick brain.”\n“You need them all in your trade.”\n“I do; especially when I’ve customers like you to deal with. Why don’t\nyou tremble?”\n“I’m not cold.”\n“Why don’t you turn pale?”\n“I am not sick.”\n“Why don’t you consult my art?”\n“I’m not silly.”\nThe old crone “nichered” a laugh under her bonnet and bandage; she then\ndrew out a short black pipe, and lighting it began to smoke. Having\nindulged a while in this sedative, she raised her bent body, took the\npipe from her lips, and while gazing steadily at the fire, said very\ndeliberately—\n“You are cold; you are sick; and you are silly.”\n“Prove it,” I rejoined.\n“I will, in few words. You are cold, because you are alone: no contact\nstrikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the\nbest of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far\naway from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not\nbeckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it\nwaits you.”\nShe again put her short black pipe to her lips, and renewed her smoking\nwith vigour.\n“You might say all that to almost any one who you knew lived as a\nsolitary dependent in a great house.”\n“I might say it to almost any one: but would it be true of almost any\none?”\n“In my circumstances.”\n“Yes; just so, in _your_ circumstances: but find me another precisely\nplaced as you are.”\n“It would be easy to find you thousands.”\n“You could scarcely find me one. If you knew it, you are peculiarly\nsituated: very near happiness; yes, within reach of it. The materials\nare all prepared; there only wants a movement to combine them. Chance\nlaid them somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss\nresults.”\n“I don’t understand enigmas. I never could guess a riddle in my life.”\n“If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm.”\n“And I must cross it with silver, I suppose?”\n“To be sure.”\nI gave her a shilling: she put it into an old stocking-foot which she\ntook out of her pocket, and having tied it round and returned it, she\ntold me to hold out my hand. I did. She approached her face to the\npalm, and pored over it without touching it.\n“It is too fine,” said she. “I can make nothing of such a hand as that;\nalmost without lines: besides, what is in a palm? Destiny is not\nwritten there.”\n“I believe you,” said I.\n“No,” she continued, “it is in the face: on the forehead, about the\neyes, in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head.”\n“Ah! now you are coming to reality,” I said, as I obeyed her. “I shall\nbegin to put some faith in you presently.”\nI knelt within half a yard of her. She stirred the fire, so that a\nripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the glare, however, as\nshe sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: mine, it illumined.\n“I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night,” she said, when\nshe had examined me a while. “I wonder what thoughts are busy in your\nheart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people\nflitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern: just as little\nsympathetic communion passing between you and them as if they were\nreally mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual substance.”\n“I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad.”\n“Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with\nwhispers of the future?”\n“Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my earnings\nto set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself.”\n“A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on: and sitting in that\nwindow-seat (you see I know your habits)—”\n“You have learned them from the servants.”\n“Ah! you think yourself sharp. Well, perhaps I have: to speak truth, I\nhave an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Poole—”\nI started to my feet when I heard the name.\n“You have—have you?” thought I; “there is diablerie in the business\nafter all, then!”\n“Don’t be alarmed,” continued the strange being; “she’s a safe hand is\nMrs. Poole: close and quiet; any one may repose confidence in her. But,\nas I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of nothing\nbut your future school? Have you no present interest in any of the\ncompany who occupy the sofas and chairs before you? Is there not one\nface you study? one figure whose movements you follow with at least\ncuriosity?”\n“I like to observe all the faces and all the figures.”\n“But do you never single one from the rest—or it may be, two?”\n“I do frequently; when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling a\ntale: it amuses me to watch them.”\n“What tale do you like best to hear?”\n“Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same\ntheme—courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe—marriage.”\n“And do you like that monotonous theme?”\n“Positively, I don’t care about it: it is nothing to me.”\n“Nothing to you? When a lady, young and full of life and health,\ncharming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank and fortune,\nsits and smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you—”\n“I what?”\n“You know—and perhaps think well of.”\n“I don’t know the gentlemen here. I have scarcely interchanged a\nsyllable with one of them; and as to thinking well of them, I consider\nsome respectable, and stately, and middle-aged, and others young,\ndashing, handsome, and lively: but certainly they are all at liberty to\nbe the recipients of whose smiles they please, without my feeling\ndisposed to consider the transaction of any moment to me.”\n“You don’t know the gentlemen here? You have not exchanged a syllable\nwith one of them? Will you say that of the master of the house!”\n“He is not at home.”\n“A profound remark! A most ingenious quibble! He went to Millcote this\nmorning, and will be back here to-night or to-morrow: does that\ncircumstance exclude him from the list of your acquaintance—blot him,\nas it were, out of existence?”\n“No; but I can scarcely see what Mr. Rochester has to do with the theme\nyou had introduced.”\n“I was talking of ladies smiling in the eyes of gentlemen; and of late\nso many smiles have been shed into Mr. Rochester’s eyes that they\noverflow like two cups filled above the brim: have you never remarked\nthat?”\n“Mr. Rochester has a right to enjoy the society of his guests.”\n“No question about his right: but have you never observed that, of all\nthe tales told here about matrimony, Mr. Rochester has been favoured\nwith the most lively and the most continuous?”\n“The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator.” I said\nthis rather to myself than to the gipsy, whose strange talk, voice,\nmanner, had by this time wrapped me in a kind of dream. One unexpected\nsentence came from her lips after another, till I got involved in a web\nof mystification; and wondered what unseen spirit had been sitting for\nweeks by my heart watching its workings and taking record of every\npulse.\n“Eagerness of a listener!” repeated she: “yes; Mr. Rochester has sat by\nthe hour, his ear inclined to the fascinating lips that took such\ndelight in their task of communicating; and Mr. Rochester was so\nwilling to receive and looked so grateful for the pastime given him;\nyou have noticed this?”\n“Grateful! I cannot remember detecting gratitude in his face.”\n“Detecting! You have analysed, then. And what did you detect, if not\ngratitude?”\nI said nothing.\n“You have seen love: have you not?—and, looking forward, you have seen\nhim married, and beheld his bride happy?”\n“Humph! Not exactly. Your witch’s skill is rather at fault sometimes.”\n“What the devil have you seen, then?”\n“Never mind: I came here to inquire, not to confess. Is it known that\nMr. Rochester is to be married?”\n“Yes; and to the beautiful Miss Ingram.”\n“Shortly?”\n“Appearances would warrant that conclusion: and, no doubt (though, with\nan audacity that wants chastising out of you, you seem to question it),\nthey will be a superlatively happy pair. He must love such a handsome,\nnoble, witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not\nhis person, at least his purse. I know she considers the Rochester\nestate eligible to the last degree; though (God pardon me!) I told her\nsomething on that point about an hour ago which made her look wondrous\ngrave: the corners of her mouth fell half an inch. I would advise her\nblackaviced suitor to look out: if another comes, with a longer or\nclearer rent-roll,—he’s dished—”\n“But, mother, I did not come to hear Mr. Rochester’s fortune: I came to\nhear my own; and you have told me nothing of it.”\n“Your fortune is yet doubtful: when I examined your face, one trait\ncontradicted another. Chance has meted you a measure of happiness: that\nI know. I knew it before I came here this evening. She has laid it\ncarefully on one side for you. I saw her do it. It depends on yourself\nto stretch out your hand, and take it up: but whether you will do so,\nis the problem I study. Kneel again on the rug.”\n“Don’t keep me long; the fire scorches me.”\nShe did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in her chair\nI knelt. She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in\nher chair. She began muttering,—\n“The flame flickers in the eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft\nand full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon: it is susceptible;\nimpression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases\nto smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that\nsignifies melancholy resulting from loneliness. It turns from me; it\nwill not suffer further scrutiny; it seems to deny, by a mocking\nglance, the truth of the discoveries I have already made,—to disown the\ncharge both of sensibility and chagrin: its pride and reserve only\nconfirm me in my opinion. The eye is favourable.\n“As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to\nimpart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be\nsilent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never\nintended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a\nmouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection\nfor its interlocutor. That feature too is propitious.\n“I see no enemy to a fortunate issue but in the brow; and that brow\nprofesses to say,—‘I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances\nrequire me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an\ninward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous\ndelights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford\nto give.’ The forehead declares, ‘Reason sits firm and holds the reins,\nand she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild\nchasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they\nare; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment\nshall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote\nin every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by:\nbut I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which\ninterprets the dictates of conscience.’\n“Well said, forehead; your declaration shall be respected. I have\nformed my plans—right plans I deem them—and in them I have attended to\nthe claims of conscience, the counsels of reason. I know how soon youth\nwould fade and bloom perish, if, in the cup of bliss offered, but one\ndreg of shame, or one flavour of remorse were detected; and I do not\nwant sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution—such is not my taste. I wish to\nfoster, not to blight—to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of\nblood—no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments,\nin sweet—That will do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium.\nI should wish now to protract this moment _ad infinitum_; but I dare\nnot. So far I have governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I\ninwardly swore I would act; but further might try me beyond my\nstrength. Rise, Miss Eyre: leave me; ‘the play is played out.’”\nWhere was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had I been dreaming? Did I dream\nstill? The old woman’s voice had changed: her accent, her gesture, and\nall were familiar to me as my own face in a glass—as the speech of my\nown tongue. I got up, but did not go. I looked; I stirred the fire, and\nI looked again: but she drew her bonnet and her bandage closer about\nher face, and again beckoned me to depart. The flame illuminated her\nhand stretched out: roused now, and on the alert for discoveries, I at\nonce noticed that hand. It was no more the withered limb of eld than my\nown; it was a rounded supple member, with smooth fingers, symmetrically\nturned; a broad ring flashed on the little finger, and stooping\nforward, I looked at it, and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times\nbefore. Again I looked at the face; which was no longer turned from\nme—on the contrary, the bonnet was doffed, the bandage displaced, the\nhead advanced.\n“Well, Jane, do you know me?” asked the familiar voice.\n“Only take off the red cloak, sir, and then—”\n“But the string is in a knot—help me.”\n“Break it, sir.”\n“There, then—‘Off, ye lendings!’” And Mr. Rochester stepped out of his\ndisguise.\n“Now, sir, what a strange idea!”\n“But well carried out, eh? Don’t you think so?”\n“With the ladies you must have managed well.”\n“But not with you?”\n“You did not act the character of a gipsy with me.”\n“What character did I act? My own?”\n“No; some unaccountable one. In short, I believe you have been trying\nto draw me out—or in; you have been talking nonsense to make me talk\nnonsense. It is scarcely fair, sir.”\n“Do you forgive me, Jane?”\n“I cannot tell till I have thought it all over. If, on reflection, I\nfind I have fallen into no great absurdity, I shall try to forgive you;\nbut it was not right.”\n“Oh, you have been very correct—very careful, very sensible.”\nI reflected, and thought, on the whole, I had. It was a comfort; but,\nindeed, I had been on my guard almost from the beginning of the\ninterview. Something of masquerade I suspected. I knew gipsies and\nfortune-tellers did not express themselves as this seeming old woman\nhad expressed herself; besides I had noted her feigned voice, her\nanxiety to conceal her features. But my mind had been running on Grace\nPoole—that living enigma, that mystery of mysteries, as I considered\nher. I had never thought of Mr. Rochester.\n“Well,” said he, “what are you musing about? What does that grave smile\nsignify?”\n“Wonder and self-congratulation, sir. I have your permission to retire\nnow, I suppose?”\n“No; stay a moment; and tell me what the people in the drawing-room\nyonder are doing.”\n“Discussing the gipsy, I daresay.”\n“Sit down!—Let me hear what they said about me.”\n“I had better not stay long, sir; it must be near eleven o’clock. Oh,\nare you aware, Mr. Rochester, that a stranger has arrived here since\nyou left this morning?”\n“A stranger!—no; who can it be? I expected no one; is he gone?”\n“No; he said he had known you long, and that he could take the liberty\nof installing himself here till you returned.”\n“The devil he did! Did he give his name?”\n“His name is Mason, sir; and he comes from the West Indies; from\nSpanish Town, in Jamaica, I think.”\nMr. Rochester was standing near me; he had taken my hand, as if to lead\nme to a chair. As I spoke he gave my wrist a convulsive grip; the smile\non his lips froze: apparently a spasm caught his breath.\n“Mason!—the West Indies!” he said, in the tone one might fancy a\nspeaking automaton to enounce its single words; “Mason!—the West\nIndies!” he reiterated; and he went over the syllables three times,\ngrowing, in the intervals of speaking, whiter than ashes: he hardly\nseemed to know what he was doing.\n“Do you feel ill, sir?” I inquired.\n“Jane, I’ve got a blow; I’ve got a blow, Jane!” He staggered.\n“Oh, lean on me, sir.”\n“Jane, you offered me your shoulder once before; let me have it now.”\n“Yes, sir, yes; and my arm.”\nHe sat down, and made me sit beside him. Holding my hand in both his\nown, he chafed it; gazing on me, at the same time, with the most\ntroubled and dreary look.\n“My little friend!” said he, “I wish I were in a quiet island with only\nyou; and trouble, and danger, and hideous recollections removed from\nme.”\n“Can I help you, sir?—I’d give my life to serve you.”\n“Jane, if aid is wanted, I’ll seek it at your hands; I promise you\nthat.”\n“Thank you, sir. Tell me what to do,—I’ll try, at least, to do it.”\n“Fetch me now, Jane, a glass of wine from the dining-room: they will be\nat supper there; and tell me if Mason is with them, and what he is\ndoing.”\nI went. I found all the party in the dining-room at supper, as Mr.\nRochester had said; they were not seated at table,—the supper was\narranged on the sideboard; each had taken what he chose, and they stood\nabout here and there in groups, their plates and glasses in their\nhands. Every one seemed in high glee; laughter and conversation were\ngeneral and animated. Mr. Mason stood near the fire, talking to Colonel\nand Mrs. Dent, and appeared as merry as any of them. I filled a\nwine-glass (I saw Miss Ingram watch me frowningly as I did so: she\nthought I was taking a liberty, I daresay), and I returned to the\nlibrary.\nMr. Rochester’s extreme pallor had disappeared, and he looked once more\nfirm and stern. He took the glass from my hand.\n“Here is to your health, ministrant spirit!” he said. He swallowed the\ncontents and returned it to me. “What are they doing, Jane?”\n“Laughing and talking, sir.”\n“They don’t look grave and mysterious, as if they had heard something\nstrange?”\n“Not at all: they are full of jests and gaiety.”\n“And Mason?”\n“He was laughing too.”\n“If all these people came in a body and spat at me, what would you do,\nJane?”\n“Turn them out of the room, sir, if I could.”\nHe half smiled. “But if I were to go to them, and they only looked at\nme coldly, and whispered sneeringly amongst each other, and then\ndropped off and left me one by one, what then? Would you go with them?”\n“I rather think not, sir: I should have more pleasure in staying with\nyou.”\n“To comfort me?”\n“Yes, sir, to comfort you, as well as I could.”\n“And if they laid you under a ban for adhering to me?”\n“I, probably, should know nothing about their ban; and if I did, I\nshould care nothing about it.”\n“Then, you could dare censure for my sake?”\n“I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence;\nas you, I am sure, do.”\n“Go back now into the room; step quietly up to Mason, and whisper in\nhis ear that Mr. Rochester is come and wishes to see him: show him in\nhere and then leave me.”\n“Yes, sir.”\nI did his behest. The company all stared at me as I passed straight\namong them. I sought Mr. Mason, delivered the message, and preceded him\nfrom the room: I ushered him into the library, and then I went\nupstairs.\nAt a late hour, after I had been in bed some time, I heard the visitors\nrepair to their chambers: I distinguished Mr. Rochester’s voice, and\nheard him say, “This way, Mason; this is your room.”\nHe spoke cheerfully: the gay tones set my heart at ease. I was soon\nasleep.\n', 'I had forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to\nlet down my window-blind. The consequence was, that when the moon,\nwhich was full and bright (for the night was fine), came in her course\nto that space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me\nthrough the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me. Awaking in the\ndead of night, I opened my eyes on her disk—silver-white and crystal\nclear. It was beautiful, but too solemn: I half rose, and stretched my\narm to draw the curtain.\nGood God! What a cry!\nThe night—its silence—its rest, was rent in twain by a savage, a sharp,\na shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall.\nMy pulse stopped: my heart stood still; my stretched arm was paralysed.\nThe cry died, and was not renewed. Indeed, whatever being uttered that\nfearful shriek could not soon repeat it: not the widest-winged condor\non the Andes could, twice in succession, send out such a yell from the\ncloud shrouding his eyrie. The thing delivering such utterance must\nrest ere it could repeat the effort.\nIt came out of the third storey; for it passed overhead. And\noverhead—yes, in the room just above my chamber-ceiling—I now heard a\nstruggle: a deadly one it seemed from the noise; and a half-smothered\nvoice shouted—\n“Help! help! help!” three times rapidly.\n“Will no one come?” it cried; and then, while the staggering and\nstamping went on wildly, I distinguished through plank and plaster:—\n“Rochester! Rochester! for God’s sake, come!”\nA chamber-door opened: some one ran, or rushed, along the gallery.\nAnother step stamped on the flooring above and something fell; and\nthere was silence.\nI had put on some clothes, though horror shook all my limbs; I issued\nfrom my apartment. The sleepers were all aroused: ejaculations,\nterrified murmurs sounded in every room; door after door unclosed; one\nlooked out and another looked out; the gallery filled. Gentlemen and\nladies alike had quitted their beds; and “Oh! what is it?”—“Who is\nhurt?”—“What has happened?”—“Fetch a light!”—“Is it fire?”—“Are there\nrobbers?”—“Where shall we run?” was demanded confusedly on all hands.\nBut for the moonlight they would have been in complete darkness. They\nran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed, some stumbled: the\nconfusion was inextricable.\n“Where the devil is Rochester?” cried Colonel Dent. “I cannot find him\nin his bed.”\n“Here! here!” was shouted in return. “Be composed, all of you: I’m\ncoming.”\nAnd the door at the end of the gallery opened, and Mr. Rochester\nadvanced with a candle: he had just descended from the upper storey.\nOne of the ladies ran to him directly; she seized his arm: it was Miss\nIngram.\n“What awful event has taken place?” said she. “Speak! let us know the\nworst at once!”\n“But don’t pull me down or strangle me,” he replied: for the Misses\nEshton were clinging about him now; and the two dowagers, in vast white\nwrappers, were bearing down on him like ships in full sail.\n“All’s right!—all’s right!” he cried. “It’s a mere rehearsal of Much\nAdo about Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous.”\nAnd dangerous he looked: his black eyes darted sparks. Calming himself\nby an effort, he added—\n“A servant has had the nightmare; that is all. She’s an excitable,\nnervous person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or\nsomething of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright. Now,\nthen, I must see you all back into your rooms; for, till the house is\nsettled, she cannot be looked after. Gentlemen, have the goodness to\nset the ladies the example. Miss Ingram, I am sure you will not fail in\nevincing superiority to idle terrors. Amy and Louisa, return to your\nnests like a pair of doves, as you are. Mesdames” (to the dowagers),\n“you will take cold to a dead certainty, if you stay in this chill\ngallery any longer.”\nAnd so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived to\nget them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories. I did\nnot wait to be ordered back to mine, but retreated unnoticed, as\nunnoticed I had left it.\nNot, however, to go to bed: on the contrary, I began and dressed myself\ncarefully. The sounds I had heard after the scream, and the words that\nhad been uttered, had probably been heard only by me; for they had\nproceeded from the room above mine: but they assured me that it was not\na servant’s dream which had thus struck horror through the house; and\nthat the explanation Mr. Rochester had given was merely an invention\nframed to pacify his guests. I dressed, then, to be ready for\nemergencies. When dressed, I sat a long time by the window looking out\nover the silent grounds and silvered fields and waiting for I knew not\nwhat. It seemed to me that some event must follow the strange cry,\nstruggle, and call.\nNo: stillness returned: each murmur and movement ceased gradually, and\nin about an hour Thornfield Hall was again as hushed as a desert. It\nseemed that sleep and night had resumed their empire. Meantime the moon\ndeclined: she was about to set. Not liking to sit in the cold and\ndarkness, I thought I would lie down on my bed, dressed as I was. I\nleft the window, and moved with little noise across the carpet; as I\nstooped to take off my shoes, a cautious hand tapped low at the door.\n“Am I wanted?” I asked.\n“Are you up?” asked the voice I expected to hear, viz., my master’s.\n“Yes, sir.”\n“And dressed?”\n“Yes.”\n“Come out, then, quietly.”\nI obeyed. Mr. Rochester stood in the gallery holding a light.\n“I want you,” he said: “come this way: take your time, and make no\nnoise.”\nMy slippers were thin: I could walk the matted floor as softly as a\ncat. He glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in the\ndark, low corridor of the fateful third storey: I had followed and\nstood at his side.\n“Have you a sponge in your room?” he asked in a whisper.\n“Yes, sir.”\n“Have you any salts—volatile salts?”\n“Yes.”\n“Go back and fetch both.”\nI returned, sought the sponge on the washstand, the salts in my drawer,\nand once more retraced my steps. He still waited; he held a key in his\nhand: approaching one of the small, black doors, he put it in the lock;\nhe paused, and addressed me again.\n“You don’t turn sick at the sight of blood?”\n“I think I shall not: I have never been tried yet.”\nI felt a thrill while I answered him; but no coldness, and no\nfaintness.\n“Just give me your hand,” he said: “it will not do to risk a fainting\nfit.”\nI put my fingers into his. “Warm and steady,” was his remark: he turned\nthe key and opened the door.\nI saw a room I remembered to have seen before, the day Mrs. Fairfax\nshowed me over the house: it was hung with tapestry; but the tapestry\nwas now looped up in one part, and there was a door apparent, which had\nthen been concealed. This door was open; a light shone out of the room\nwithin: I heard thence a snarling, snatching sound, almost like a dog\nquarrelling. Mr. Rochester, putting down his candle, said to me, “Wait\na minute,” and he went forward to the inner apartment. A shout of\nlaughter greeted his entrance; noisy at first, and terminating in Grace\nPoole’s own goblin ha! ha! _She_ then was there. He made some sort of\narrangement without speaking, though I heard a low voice address him:\nhe came out and closed the door behind him.\n“Here, Jane!” he said; and I walked round to the other side of a large\nbed, which with its drawn curtains concealed a considerable portion of\nthe chamber. An easy-chair was near the bed-head: a man sat in it,\ndressed with the exception of his coat; he was still; his head leant\nback; his eyes were closed. Mr. Rochester held the candle over him; I\nrecognised in his pale and seemingly lifeless face—the stranger, Mason:\nI saw too that his linen on one side, and one arm, was almost soaked in\nblood.\n“Hold the candle,” said Mr. Rochester, and I took it: he fetched a\nbasin of water from the washstand: “Hold that,” said he. I obeyed. He\ntook the sponge, dipped it in, and moistened the corpse-like face; he\nasked for my smelling-bottle, and applied it to the nostrils. Mr. Mason\nshortly unclosed his eyes; he groaned. Mr. Rochester opened the shirt\nof the wounded man, whose arm and shoulder were bandaged: he sponged\naway blood, trickling fast down.\n“Is there immediate danger?” murmured Mr. Mason.\n“Pooh! No—a mere scratch. Don’t be so overcome, man: bear up! I’ll\nfetch a surgeon for you now, myself: you’ll be able to be removed by\nmorning, I hope. Jane,” he continued.\n“Sir?”\n“I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman, for an\nhour, or perhaps two hours: you will sponge the blood as I do when it\nreturns: if he feels faint, you will put the glass of water on that\nstand to his lips, and your salts to his nose. You will not speak to\nhim on any pretext—and—Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if\nyou speak to her: open your lips—agitate yourself—and I’ll not answer\nfor the consequences.”\nAgain the poor man groaned; he looked as if he dared not move; fear,\neither of death or of something else, appeared almost to paralyse him.\nMr. Rochester put the now bloody sponge into my hand, and I proceeded\nto use it as he had done. He watched me a second, then saying,\n“Remember!—No conversation,” he left the room. I experienced a strange\nfeeling as the key grated in the lock, and the sound of his retreating\nstep ceased to be heard.\nHere then I was in the third storey, fastened into one of its mystic\ncells; night around me; a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and\nhands; a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door: yes—that\nwas appalling—the rest I could bear; but I shuddered at the thought of\nGrace Poole bursting out upon me.\nI must keep to my post, however. I must watch this ghastly\ncountenance—these blue, still lips forbidden to unclose—these eyes now\nshut, now opening, now wandering through the room, now fixing on me,\nand ever glazed with the dulness of horror. I must dip my hand again\nand again in the basin of blood and water, and wipe away the trickling\ngore. I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my\nemployment; the shadows darken on the wrought, antique tapestry round\nme, and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver\nstrangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite—whose front,\ndivided into twelve panels, bore, in grim design, the heads of the\ntwelve apostles, each enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame;\nwhile above them at the top rose an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ.\nAccording as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here\nor glanced there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, that bent his\nbrow; now St. John’s long hair that waved; and anon the devilish face\nof Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed gathering life and\nthreatening a revelation of the arch-traitor—of Satan himself—in his\nsubordinate’s form.\nAmidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch: to listen for the\nmovements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den. But since\nMr. Rochester’s visit it seemed spellbound: all the night I heard but\nthree sounds at three long intervals,—a step creak, a momentary renewal\nof the snarling, canine noise, and a deep human groan.\nThen my own thoughts worried me. What crime was this, that lived\nincarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled\nnor subdued by the owner?—what mystery, that broke out now in fire and\nnow in blood, at the deadest hours of night? What creature was it,\nthat, masked in an ordinary woman’s face and shape, uttered the voice,\nnow of a mocking demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey?\nAnd this man I bent over—this commonplace, quiet stranger—how had he\nbecome involved in the web of horror? and why had the Fury flown at\nhim? What made him seek this quarter of the house at an untimely\nseason, when he should have been asleep in bed? I had heard Mr.\nRochester assign him an apartment below—what brought him here! And why,\nnow, was he so tame under the violence or treachery done him? Why did\nhe so quietly submit to the concealment Mr. Rochester enforced? Why\n_did_ Mr. Rochester enforce this concealment? His guest had been\noutraged, his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted\nagainst; and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in\noblivion! Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that\nthe impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness\nof the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me\nof this. It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive\ndisposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active\nenergy of the other: whence then had arisen Mr. Rochester’s dismay when\nhe heard of Mr. Mason’s arrival? Why had the mere name of this\nunresisting individual—whom his word now sufficed to control like a\nchild—fallen on him, a few hours since, as a thunderbolt might fall on\nan oak?\nOh! I could not forget his look and his paleness when he whispered:\n“Jane, I have got a blow—I have got a blow, Jane.” I could not forget\nhow the arm had trembled which he rested on my shoulder: and it was no\nlight matter which could thus bow the resolute spirit and thrill the\nvigorous frame of Fairfax Rochester.\n“When will he come? When will he come?” I cried inwardly, as the night\nlingered and lingered—as my bleeding patient drooped, moaned, sickened:\nand neither day nor aid arrived. I had, again and again, held the water\nto Mason’s white lips; again and again offered him the stimulating\nsalts: my efforts seemed ineffectual: either bodily or mental\nsuffering, or loss of blood, or all three combined, were fast\nprostrating his strength. He moaned so, and looked so weak, wild, and\nlost, I feared he was dying; and I might not even speak to him.\nThe candle, wasted at last, went out; as it expired, I perceived\nstreaks of grey light edging the window curtains: dawn was then\napproaching. Presently I heard Pilot bark far below, out of his distant\nkennel in the courtyard: hope revived. Nor was it unwarranted: in five\nminutes more the grating key, the yielding lock, warned me my watch was\nrelieved. It could not have lasted more than two hours: many a week has\nseemed shorter.\nMr. Rochester entered, and with him the surgeon he had been to fetch.\n“Now, Carter, be on the alert,” he said to this last: “I give you but\nhalf-an-hour for dressing the wound, fastening the bandages, getting\nthe patient downstairs and all.”\n“But is he fit to move, sir?”\n“No doubt of it; it is nothing serious; he is nervous, his spirits must\nbe kept up. Come, set to work.”\nMr. Rochester drew back the thick curtain, drew up the holland blind,\nlet in all the daylight he could; and I was surprised and cheered to\nsee how far dawn was advanced: what rosy streaks were beginning to\nbrighten the east. Then he approached Mason, whom the surgeon was\nalready handling.\n“Now, my good fellow, how are you?” he asked.\n“She’s done for me, I fear,” was the faint reply.\n“Not a whit!—courage! This day fortnight you’ll hardly be a pin the\nworse of it: you’ve lost a little blood; that’s all. Carter, assure him\nthere’s no danger.”\n“I can do that conscientiously,” said Carter, who had now undone the\nbandages; “only I wish I could have got here sooner: he would not have\nbled so much—but how is this? The flesh on the shoulder is torn as well\nas cut. This wound was not done with a knife: there have been teeth\nhere!”\n“She bit me,” he murmured. “She worried me like a tigress, when\nRochester got the knife from her.”\n“You should not have yielded: you should have grappled with her at\nonce,” said Mr. Rochester.\n“But under such circumstances, what could one do?” returned Mason. “Oh,\nit was frightful!” he added, shuddering. “And I did not expect it: she\nlooked so quiet at first.”\n“I warned you,” was his friend’s answer; “I said—be on your guard when\nyou go near her. Besides, you might have waited till to-morrow, and had\nme with you: it was mere folly to attempt the interview to-night, and\nalone.”\n“I thought I could have done some good.”\n“You thought! you thought! Yes, it makes me impatient to hear you: but,\nhowever, you have suffered, and are likely to suffer enough for not\ntaking my advice; so I’ll say no more. Carter—hurry!—hurry! The sun\nwill soon rise, and I must have him off.”\n“Directly, sir; the shoulder is just bandaged. I must look to this\nother wound in the arm: she has had her teeth here too, I think.”\n“She sucked the blood: she said she’d drain my heart,” said Mason.\nI saw Mr. Rochester shudder: a singularly marked expression of disgust,\nhorror, hatred, warped his countenance almost to distortion; but he\nonly said—\n“Come, be silent, Richard, and never mind her gibberish: don’t repeat\nit.”\n“I wish I could forget it,” was the answer.\n“You will when you are out of the country: when you get back to Spanish\nTown, you may think of her as dead and buried—or rather, you need not\nthink of her at all.”\n“Impossible to forget this night!”\n“It is not impossible: have some energy, man. You thought you were as\ndead as a herring two hours since, and you are all alive and talking\nnow. There!—Carter has done with you or nearly so; I’ll make you decent\nin a trice. Jane” (he turned to me for the first time since his\nre-entrance), “take this key: go down into my bedroom, and walk\nstraight forward into my dressing-room: open the top drawer of the\nwardrobe and take out a clean shirt and neck-handkerchief: bring them\nhere; and be nimble.”\nI went; sought the repository he had mentioned, found the articles\nnamed, and returned with them.\n“Now,” said he, “go to the other side of the bed while I order his\ntoilet; but don’t leave the room: you may be wanted again.”\nI retired as directed.\n“Was anybody stirring below when you went down, Jane?” inquired Mr.\nRochester presently.\n“No, sir; all was very still.”\n“We shall get you off cannily, Dick: and it will be better, both for\nyour sake, and for that of the poor creature in yonder. I have striven\nlong to avoid exposure, and I should not like it to come at last. Here,\nCarter, help him on with his waist-coat. Where did you leave your\nfurred cloak? You can’t travel a mile without that, I know, in this\ndamned cold climate. In your room?—Jane, run down to Mr. Mason’s\nroom,—the one next mine,—and fetch a cloak you will see there.”\nAgain I ran, and again returned, bearing an immense mantle lined and\nedged with fur.\n“Now, I’ve another errand for you,” said my untiring master; “you must\naway to my room again. What a mercy you are shod with velvet, Jane!—a\nclod-hopping messenger would never do at this juncture. You must open\nthe middle drawer of my toilet-table and take out a little phial and a\nlittle glass you will find there,—quick!”\nI flew thither and back, bringing the desired vessels.\n“That’s well! Now, doctor, I shall take the liberty of administering a\ndose myself, on my own responsibility. I got this cordial at Rome, of\nan Italian charlatan—a fellow you would have kicked, Carter. It is not\na thing to be used indiscriminately, but it is good upon occasion: as\nnow, for instance. Jane, a little water.”\nHe held out the tiny glass, and I half filled it from the water-bottle\non the washstand.\n“That will do;—now wet the lip of the phial.”\nI did so; he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and presented\nit to Mason.\n“Drink, Richard: it will give you the heart you lack, for an hour or\nso.”\n“But will it hurt me?—is it inflammatory?”\n“Drink! drink! drink!”\nMr. Mason obeyed, because it was evidently useless to resist. He was\ndressed now: he still looked pale, but he was no longer gory and\nsullied. Mr. Rochester let him sit three minutes after he had swallowed\nthe liquid; he then took his arm—\n“Now I am sure you can get on your feet,” he said—“try.”\nThe patient rose.\n“Carter, take him under the other shoulder. Be of good cheer, Richard;\nstep out—that’s it!”\n“I do feel better,” remarked Mr. Mason.\n“I am sure you do. Now, Jane, trip on before us away to the backstairs;\nunbolt the side-passage door, and tell the driver of the post-chaise\nyou will see in the yard—or just outside, for I told him not to drive\nhis rattling wheels over the pavement—to be ready; we are coming: and,\nJane, if any one is about, come to the foot of the stairs and hem.”\nIt was by this time half-past five, and the sun was on the point of\nrising; but I found the kitchen still dark and silent. The side-passage\ndoor was fastened; I opened it with as little noise as possible: all\nthe yard was quiet; but the gates stood wide open, and there was a\npost-chaise, with horses ready harnessed, and driver seated on the box,\nstationed outside. I approached him, and said the gentlemen were\ncoming; he nodded: then I looked carefully round and listened. The\nstillness of early morning slumbered everywhere; the curtains were yet\ndrawn over the servants’ chamber windows; little birds were just\ntwittering in the blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs drooped\nlike white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the\ncarriage horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables: all\nelse was still.\nThe gentlemen now appeared. Mason, supported by Mr. Rochester and the\nsurgeon, seemed to walk with tolerable ease: they assisted him into the\nchaise; Carter followed.\n“Take care of him,” said Mr. Rochester to the latter, “and keep him at\nyour house till he is quite well: I shall ride over in a day or two to\nsee how he gets on. Richard, how is it with you?”\n“The fresh air revives me, Fairfax.”\n“Leave the window open on his side, Carter; there is no wind—good-bye,\nDick.”\n“Fairfax—”\n“Well what is it?”\n“Let her be taken care of; let her be treated as tenderly as may be:\nlet her—” he stopped and burst into tears.\n“I do my best; and have done it, and will do it,” was the answer: he\nshut up the chaise door, and the vehicle drove away.\n“Yet would to God there was an end of all this!” added Mr. Rochester,\nas he closed and barred the heavy yard-gates.\nThis done, he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a door in\nthe wall bordering the orchard. I, supposing he had done with me,\nprepared to return to the house; again, however, I heard him call\n“Jane!” He had opened the portal and stood at it, waiting for me.\n“Come where there is some freshness, for a few moments,” he said; “that\nhouse is a mere dungeon: don’t you feel it so?”\n“It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir.”\n“The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes,” he answered; “and you\nsee it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is\nslime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate,\nand the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now _here_”\n(he pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered) “all is real, sweet,\nand pure.”\nHe strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple trees, pear trees,\nand cherry trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all\nsorts of old-fashioned flowers, stocks, sweet-williams, primroses,\npansies, mingled with southernwood, sweet-briar, and various fragrant\nherbs. They were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams,\nfollowed by a lovely spring morning, could make them: the sun was just\nentering the dappled east, and his light illumined the wreathed and\ndewy orchard trees and shone down the quiet walks under them.\n“Jane, will you have a flower?”\nHe gathered a half-blown rose, the first on the bush, and offered it to\nme.\n“Thank you, sir.”\n“Do you like this sunrise, Jane? That sky with its high and light\nclouds which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm—this placid\nand balmly atmosphere?”\n“I do, very much.”\n“You have passed a strange night, Jane.”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“And it has made you look pale—were you afraid when I left you alone\nwith Mason?”\n“I was afraid of some one coming out of the inner room.”\n“But I had fastened the door—I had the key in my pocket: I should have\nbeen a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb—my pet lamb—so near a\nwolf’s den, unguarded: you were safe.”\n“Will Grace Poole live here still, sir?”\n“Oh yes! don’t trouble your head about her—put the thing out of your\nthoughts.”\n“Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays.”\n“Never fear—I will take care of myself.”\n“Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now, sir?”\n“I cannot vouch for that till Mason is out of England: nor even then.\nTo live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack\nand spue fire any day.”\n“But Mr. Mason seems a man easily led. Your influence, sir, is\nevidently potent with him: he will never set you at defiance or\nwilfully injure you.”\n“Oh, no! Mason will not defy me; nor, knowing it, will he hurt me—but,\nunintentionally, he might in a moment, by one careless word, deprive\nme, if not of life, yet for ever of happiness.”\n“Tell him to be cautious, sir: let him know what you fear, and show him\nhow to avert the danger.”\nHe laughed sardonically, hastily took my hand, and as hastily threw it\nfrom him.\n“If I could do that, simpleton, where would the danger be? Annihilated\nin a moment. Ever since I have known Mason, I have only had to say to\nhim ‘Do that,’ and the thing has been done. But I cannot give him\norders in this case: I cannot say ‘Beware of harming me, Richard;’ for\nit is imperative that I should keep him ignorant that harm to me is\npossible. Now you look puzzled; and I will puzzle you further. You are\nmy little friend, are you not?”\n“I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right.”\n“Precisely: I see you do. I see genuine contentment in your gait and\nmien, your eye and face, when you are helping me and pleasing\nme—working for me, and with me, in, as you characteristically say,\n‘_all that is right_:’ for if I bid you do what you thought wrong,\nthere would be no light-footed running, no neat-handed alacrity, no\nlively glance and animated complexion. My friend would then turn to me,\nquiet and pale, and would say, ‘No, sir; that is impossible: I cannot\ndo it, because it is wrong;’ and would become immutable as a fixed\nstar. Well, you too have power over me, and may injure me: yet I dare\nnot show you where I am vulnerable, lest, faithful and friendly as you\nare, you should transfix me at once.”\n“If you have no more to fear from Mr. Mason than you have from me, sir,\nyou are very safe.”\n“God grant it may be so! Here, Jane, is an arbour; sit down.”\nThe arbour was an arch in the wall, lined with ivy; it contained a\nrustic seat. Mr. Rochester took it, leaving room, however, for me: but\nI stood before him.\n“Sit,” he said; “the bench is long enough for two. You don’t hesitate\nto take a place at my side, do you? Is that wrong, Jane?”\nI answered him by assuming it: to refuse would, I felt, have been\nunwise.\n“Now, my little friend, while the sun drinks the dew—while all the\nflowers in this old garden awake and expand, and the birds fetch their\nyoung ones’ breakfast out of the Thornfield, and the early bees do\ntheir first spell of work—I’ll put a case to you, which you must\nendeavour to suppose your own: but first, look at me, and tell me you\nare at ease, and not fearing that I err in detaining you, or that you\nerr in staying.”\n“No, sir; I am content.”\n“Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:—suppose you were no longer a\ngirl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from\nchildhood upwards; imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive\nthat you there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from\nwhat motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life\nand taint all your existence. Mind, I don’t say a _crime_; I am not\nspeaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty act, which might make\nthe perpetrator amenable to the law: my word is _error_. The results of\nwhat you have done become in time to you utterly insupportable; you\ntake measures to obtain relief: unusual measures, but neither unlawful\nnor culpable. Still you are miserable; for hope has quitted you on the\nvery confines of life: your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which\nyou feel will not leave it till the time of setting. Bitter and base\nassociations have become the sole food of your memory: you wander here\nand there, seeking rest in exile: happiness in pleasure—I mean in\nheartless, sensual pleasure—such as dulls intellect and blights\nfeeling. Heart-weary and soul-withered, you come home after years of\nvoluntary banishment: you make a new acquaintance—how or where no\nmatter: you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities\nwhich you have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered;\nand they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such\nsociety revives, regenerates: you feel better days come back—higher\nwishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to\nspend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal\nbeing. To attain this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle\nof custom—a mere conventional impediment which neither your conscience\nsanctifies nor your judgment approves?”\nHe paused for an answer: and what was I to say? Oh, for some good\nspirit to suggest a judicious and satisfactory response! Vain\naspiration! The west wind whispered in the ivy round me; but no gentle\nAriel borrowed its breath as a medium of speech: the birds sang in the\ntree-tops; but their song, however sweet, was inarticulate.\nAgain Mr. Rochester propounded his query:\n“Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man\njustified in daring the world’s opinion, in order to attach to him for\never this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own\npeace of mind and regeneration of life?”\n“Sir,” I answered, “a wanderer’s repose or a sinner’s reformation\nshould never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die;\nphilosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one\nyou know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals\nfor strength to amend and solace to heal.”\n“But the instrument—the instrument! God, who does the work, ordains the\ninstrument. I have myself—I tell it you without parable—been a worldly,\ndissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the instrument for\nmy cure in—”\nHe paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling. I\nalmost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to catch\nthe suspended revelation; but they would have had to wait many\nminutes—so long was the silence protracted. At last I looked up at the\ntardy speaker: he was looking eagerly at me.\n“Little friend,” said he, in quite a changed tone—while his face\nchanged too, losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming harsh\nand sarcastic—“you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram:\ndon’t you think if I married her she would regenerate me with a\nvengeance?”\nHe got up instantly, went quite to the other end of the walk, and when\nhe came back he was humming a tune.\n“Jane, Jane,” said he, stopping before me, “you are quite pale with\nyour vigils: don’t you curse me for disturbing your rest?”\n“Curse you? No, sir.”\n“Shake hands in confirmation of the word. What cold fingers! They were\nwarmer last night when I touched them at the door of the mysterious\nchamber. Jane, when will you watch with me again?”\n“Whenever I can be useful, sir.”\n“For instance, the night before I am married! I am sure I shall not be\nable to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company?\nTo you I can talk of my lovely one: for now you have seen her and know\nher.”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“She’s a rare one, is she not, Jane?”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“A strapper—a real strapper, Jane: big, brown, and buxom; with hair\njust such as the ladies of Carthage must have had. Bless me! there’s\nDent and Lynn in the stables! Go in by the shrubbery, through that\nwicket.”\nAs I went one way, he went another, and I heard him in the yard, saying\ncheerfully—\n“Mason got the start of you all this morning; he was gone before\nsunrise: I rose at four to see him off.”\n', 'Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are\nsigns; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has\nnot yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life,\nbecause I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist\n(for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged\nrelatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the\nsource to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal\ncomprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies\nof Nature with man.\nWhen I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie\nLeaven say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little\nchild; and that to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either\nto one’s self or one’s kin. The saying might have worn out of my\nmemory, had not a circumstance immediately followed which served\nindelibly to fix it there. The next day Bessie was sent for home to the\ndeathbed of her little sister.\nOf late I had often recalled this saying and this incident; for during\nthe past week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not\nbrought with it a dream of an infant, which I sometimes hushed in my\narms, sometimes dandled on my knee, sometimes watched playing with\ndaisies on a lawn, or again, dabbling its hands in running water. It\nwas a wailing child this night, and a laughing one the next: now it\nnestled close to me, and now it ran from me; but whatever mood the\napparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven\nsuccessive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber.\nI did not like this iteration of one idea—this strange recurrence of\none image, and I grew nervous as bedtime approached and the hour of the\nvision drew near. It was from companionship with this baby-phantom I\nhad been roused on that moonlight night when I heard the cry; and it\nwas on the afternoon of the day following I was summoned downstairs by\na message that some one wanted me in Mrs. Fairfax’s room. On repairing\nthither, I found a man waiting for me, having the appearance of a\ngentleman’s servant: he was dressed in deep mourning, and the hat he\nheld in his hand was surrounded with a crape band.\n“I daresay you hardly remember me, Miss,” he said, rising as I entered;\n“but my name is Leaven: I lived coachman with Mrs. Reed when you were\nat Gateshead, eight or nine years since, and I live there still.”\n“Oh, Robert! how do you do? I remember you very well: you used to give\nme a ride sometimes on Miss Georgiana’s bay pony. And how is Bessie?\nYou are married to Bessie?”\n“Yes, Miss: my wife is very hearty, thank you; she brought me another\nlittle one about two months since—we have three now—and both mother and\nchild are thriving.”\n“And are the family well at the house, Robert?”\n“I am sorry I can’t give you better news of them, Miss: they are very\nbadly at present—in great trouble.”\n“I hope no one is dead,” I said, glancing at his black dress. He too\nlooked down at the crape round his hat and replied—\n“Mr. John died yesterday was a week, at his chambers in London.”\n“Mr. John?”\n“Yes.”\n“And how does his mother bear it?”\n“Why, you see, Miss Eyre, it is not a common mishap: his life has been\nvery wild: these last three years he gave himself up to strange ways,\nand his death was shocking.”\n“I heard from Bessie he was not doing well.”\n“Doing well! He could not do worse: he ruined his health and his estate\namongst the worst men and the worst women. He got into debt and into\njail: his mother helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he\nreturned to his old companions and habits. His head was not strong: the\nknaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard. He\ncame down to Gateshead about three weeks ago and wanted missis to give\nup all to him. Missis refused: her means have long been much reduced by\nhis extravagance; so he went back again, and the next news was that he\nwas dead. How he died, God knows!—they say he killed himself.”\nI was silent: the tidings were frightful. Robert Leaven resumed—\n“Missis had been out of health herself for some time: she had got very\nstout, but was not strong with it; and the loss of money and fear of\npoverty were quite breaking her down. The information about Mr. John’s\ndeath and the manner of it came too suddenly: it brought on a stroke.\nShe was three days without speaking; but last Tuesday she seemed rather\nbetter: she appeared as if she wanted to say something, and kept making\nsigns to my wife and mumbling. It was only yesterday morning, however,\nthat Bessie understood she was pronouncing your name; and at last she\nmade out the words, ‘Bring Jane—fetch Jane Eyre: I want to speak to\nher.’ Bessie is not sure whether she is in her right mind, or means\nanything by the words; but she told Miss Reed and Miss Georgiana, and\nadvised them to send for you. The young ladies put it off at first; but\ntheir mother grew so restless, and said, ‘Jane, Jane,’ so many times,\nthat at last they consented. I left Gateshead yesterday: and if you can\nget ready, Miss, I should like to take you back with me early to-morrow\nmorning.”\n“Yes, Robert, I shall be ready: it seems to me that I ought to go.”\n“I think so too, Miss. Bessie said she was sure you would not refuse:\nbut I suppose you will have to ask leave before you can get off?”\n“Yes; and I will do it now;” and having directed him to the servants’\nhall, and recommended him to the care of John’s wife, and the\nattentions of John himself, I went in search of Mr. Rochester.\nHe was not in any of the lower rooms; he was not in the yard, the\nstables, or the grounds. I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had seen him;—yes:\nshe believed he was playing billiards with Miss Ingram. To the\nbilliard-room I hastened: the click of balls and the hum of voices\nresounded thence; Mr. Rochester, Miss Ingram, the two Misses Eshton,\nand their admirers, were all busied in the game. It required some\ncourage to disturb so interesting a party; my errand, however, was one\nI could not defer, so I approached the master where he stood at Miss\nIngram’s side. She turned as I drew near, and looked at me haughtily:\nher eyes seemed to demand, “What can the creeping creature want now?”\nand when I said, in a low voice, “Mr. Rochester,” she made a movement\nas if tempted to order me away. I remember her appearance at the\nmoment—it was very graceful and very striking: she wore a morning robe\nof sky-blue crape; a gauzy azure scarf was twisted in her hair. She had\nbeen all animation with the game, and irritated pride did not lower the\nexpression of her haughty lineaments.\n“Does that person want you?” she inquired of Mr. Rochester; and Mr.\nRochester turned to see who the “person” was. He made a curious\ngrimace—one of his strange and equivocal demonstrations—threw down his\ncue and followed me from the room.\n“Well, Jane?” he said, as he rested his back against the schoolroom\ndoor, which he had shut.\n“If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two.”\n“What to do?—where to go?”\n“To see a sick lady who has sent for me.”\n“What sick lady?—where does she live?”\n“At Gateshead; in ——shire.”\n“-shire? That is a hundred miles off! Who may she be that sends for\npeople to see her that distance?”\n“Her name is Reed, sir—Mrs. Reed.”\n“Reed of Gateshead? There was a Reed of Gateshead, a magistrate.”\n“It is his widow, sir.”\n“And what have you to do with her? How do you know her?”\n“Mr. Reed was my uncle—my mother’s brother.”\n“The deuce he was! You never told me that before: you always said you\nhad no relations.”\n“None that would own me, sir. Mr. Reed is dead, and his wife cast me\noff.”\n“Why?”\n“Because I was poor, and burdensome, and she disliked me.”\n“But Reed left children?—you must have cousins? Sir George Lynn was\ntalking of a Reed of Gateshead yesterday, who, he said, was one of the\nveriest rascals on town; and Ingram was mentioning a Georgiana Reed of\nthe same place, who was much admired for her beauty a season or two ago\nin London.”\n“John Reed is dead, too, sir: he ruined himself and half-ruined his\nfamily, and is supposed to have committed suicide. The news so shocked\nhis mother that it brought on an apoplectic attack.”\n“And what good can you do her? Nonsense, Jane! I would never think of\nrunning a hundred miles to see an old lady who will, perhaps, be dead\nbefore you reach her: besides, you say she cast you off.”\n“Yes, sir, but that is long ago; and when her circumstances were very\ndifferent: I could not be easy to neglect her wishes now.”\n“How long will you stay?”\n“As short a time as possible, sir.”\n“Promise me only to stay a week—”\n“I had better not pass my word: I might be obliged to break it.”\n“At all events you _will_ come back: you will not be induced under any\npretext to take up a permanent residence with her?”\n“Oh, no! I shall certainly return if all be well.”\n“And who goes with you? You don’t travel a hundred miles alone.”\n“No, sir, she has sent her coachman.”\n“A person to be trusted?”\n“Yes, sir, he has lived ten years in the family.”\nMr. Rochester meditated. “When do you wish to go?”\n“Early to-morrow morning, sir.”\n“Well, you must have some money; you can’t travel without money, and I\ndaresay you have not much: I have given you no salary yet. How much\nhave you in the world, Jane?” he asked, smiling.\nI drew out my purse; a meagre thing it was. “Five shillings, sir.” He\ntook the purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as\nif its scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book: “Here,”\nsaid he, offering me a note; it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but\nfifteen. I told him I had no change.\n“I don’t want change; you know that. Take your wages.”\nI declined accepting more than was my due. He scowled at first; then,\nas if recollecting something, he said—\n“Right, right! Better not give you all now: you would, perhaps, stay\naway three months if you had fifty pounds. There are ten; is it not\nplenty?”\n“Yes, sir, but now you owe me five.”\n“Come back for it, then; I am your banker for forty pounds.”\n“Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention another matter of business to you\nwhile I have the opportunity.”\n“Matter of business? I am curious to hear it.”\n“You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly to be\nmarried?”\n“Yes; what then?”\n“In that case, sir, Adèle ought to go to school: I am sure you will\nperceive the necessity of it.”\n“To get her out of my bride’s way, who might otherwise walk over her\nrather too emphatically? There’s sense in the suggestion; not a doubt\nof it. Adèle, as you say, must go to school; and you, of course, must\nmarch straight to—the devil?”\n“I hope not, sir; but I must seek another situation somewhere.”\n“In course!” he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of\nfeatures equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes.\n“And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by\nyou to seek a place, I suppose?”\n“No, sir; I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me\nin asking favours of them—but I shall advertise.”\n“You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!” he growled. “At your peril\nyou advertise! I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten\npounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.”\n“And so have I, sir,” I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind\nme. “I could not spare the money on any account.”\n“Little niggard!” said he, “refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me\nfive pounds, Jane.”\n“Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.”\n“Just let me look at the cash.”\n“No, sir; you are not to be trusted.”\n“Jane!”\n“Sir?”\n“Promise me one thing.”\n“I’ll promise you anything, sir, that I think I am likely to perform.”\n“Not to advertise: and to trust this quest of a situation to me. I’ll\nfind you one in time.”\n“I shall be glad so to do, sir, if you, in your turn, will promise that\nI and Adèle shall be both safe out of the house before your bride\nenters it.”\n“Very well! very well! I’ll pledge my word on it. You go to-morrow,\nthen?”\n“Yes, sir; early.”\n“Shall you come down to the drawing-room after dinner?”\n“No, sir, I must prepare for the journey.”\n“Then you and I must bid good-bye for a little while?”\n“I suppose so, sir.”\n“And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me;\nI’m not quite up to it.”\n“They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer.”\n“Then say it.”\n“Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present.”\n“What must I say?”\n“The same, if you like, sir.”\n“Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present; is that all?”\n“Yes.”\n“It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like\nsomething else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands, for\ninstance; but no—that would not content me either. So you’ll do no more\nthan say Farewell, Jane?”\n“It is enough, sir: as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty\nword as in many.”\n“Very likely; but it is blank and cool—‘Farewell.’”\n“How long is he going to stand with his back against that door?” I\nasked myself; “I want to commence my packing.” The dinner-bell rang,\nand suddenly away he bolted, without another syllable: I saw him no\nmore during the day, and was off before he had risen in the morning.\nI reached the lodge at Gateshead about five o’clock in the afternoon of\nthe first of May: I stepped in there before going up to the hall. It\nwas very clean and neat: the ornamental windows were hung with little\nwhite curtains; the floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were\nburnished bright, and the fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth,\nnursing her last-born, and Robert and his sister played quietly in a\ncorner.\n“Bless you!—I knew you would come!” exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as I\nentered.\n“Yes, Bessie,” said I, after I had kissed her; “and I trust I am not\ntoo late. How is Mrs. Reed?—Alive still, I hope.”\n“Yes, she is alive; and more sensible and collected than she was. The\ndoctor says she may linger a week or two yet; but he hardly thinks she\nwill finally recover.”\n“Has she mentioned me lately?”\n“She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come,\nbut she is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago, when I was up at the\nhouse. She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and\nwakes up about six or seven. Will you rest yourself here an hour, Miss,\nand then I will go up with you?”\nRobert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle\nand went to welcome him: afterwards she insisted on my taking off my\nbonnet and having some tea; for she said I looked pale and tired. I was\nglad to accept her hospitality; and I submitted to be relieved of my\ntravelling garb just as passively as I used to let her undress me when\na child.\nOld times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling\nabout—setting out the tea-tray with her best china, cutting bread and\nbutter, toasting a tea-cake, and, between whiles, giving little Robert\nor Jane an occasional tap or push, just as she used to give me in\nformer days. Bessie had retained her quick temper as well as her light\nfoot and good looks.\nTea ready, I was going to approach the table; but she desired me to sit\nstill, quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served at the\nfireside, she said; and she placed before me a little round stand with\nmy cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me\nwith some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair: and I smiled\nand obeyed her as in bygone days.\nShe wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort of\na person the mistress was; and when I told her there was only a master,\nwhether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her he was\nrather an ugly man, but quite a gentleman; and that he treated me\nkindly, and I was content. Then I went on to describe to her the gay\ncompany that had lately been staying at the house; and to these details\nBessie listened with interest: they were precisely of the kind she\nrelished.\nIn such conversation an hour was soon gone: Bessie restored to me my\nbonnet, &c., and, accompanied by her, I quitted the lodge for the hall.\nIt was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago,\nwalked down the path I was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning\nin January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered\nheart—a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation—to seek the chilly\nharbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored. The same\nhostile roof now again rose before me: my prospects were doubtful yet;\nand I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face\nof the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own\npowers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my\nwrongs, too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment\nextinguished.\n“You shall go into the breakfast-room first,” said Bessie, as she\npreceded me through the hall; “the young ladies will be there.”\nIn another moment I was within that apartment. There was every article\nof furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first\nintroduced to Mr. Brocklehurst: the very rug he had stood upon still\ncovered the hearth. Glancing at the bookcases, I thought I could\ndistinguish the two volumes of Bewick’s British Birds occupying their\nold place on the third shelf, and Gulliver’s Travels and the Arabian\nNights ranged just above. The inanimate objects were not changed; but\nthe living things had altered past recognition.\nTwo young ladies appeared before me; one very tall, almost as tall as\nMiss Ingram—very thin too, with a sallow face and severe mien. There\nwas something ascetic in her look, which was augmented by the extreme\nplainness of a straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen\ncollar, hair combed away from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of\na string of ebony beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza,\nthough I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that\nelongated and colourless visage.\nThe other was as certainly Georgiana: but not the Georgiana I\nremembered—the slim and fairy-like girl of eleven. This was a\nfull-blown, very plump damsel, fair as waxwork, with handsome and\nregular features, languishing blue eyes, and ringleted yellow hair. The\nhue of her dress was black too; but its fashion was so different from\nher sister’s—so much more flowing and becoming—it looked as stylish as\nthe other’s looked puritanical.\nIn each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother—and only one;\nthe thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent’s Cairngorm eye: the\nblooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and\nchin—perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable\nhardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom.\nBoth ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me\nby the name of “Miss Eyre.” Eliza’s greeting was delivered in a short,\nabrupt voice, without a smile; and then she sat down again, fixed her\neyes on the fire, and seemed to forget me. Georgiana added to her “How\nd’ye do?” several commonplaces about my journey, the weather, and so\non, uttered in rather a drawling tone: and accompanied by sundry\nside-glances that measured me from head to foot—now traversing the\nfolds of my drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain\ntrimming of my cottage bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of\nletting you know that they think you a “quiz” without actually saying\nthe words. A certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner,\nnonchalance of tone, express fully their sentiments on the point,\nwithout committing them by any positive rudeness in word or deed.\nA sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power\nover me it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised\nto find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the\nsemi-sarcastic attentions of the other—Eliza did not mortify, nor\nGeorgiana ruffle me. The fact was, I had other things to think about;\nwithin the last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more\npotent than any they could raise—pains and pleasures so much more acute\nand exquisite had been excited than any it was in their power to\ninflict or bestow—that their airs gave me no concern either for good or\nbad.\n“How is Mrs. Reed?” I asked soon, looking calmly at Georgiana, who\nthought fit to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an\nunexpected liberty.\n“Mrs. Reed? Ah! mama, you mean; she is extremely poorly: I doubt if you\ncan see her to-night.”\n“If,” said I, “you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, I\nshould be much obliged to you.”\nGeorgiana almost started, and she opened her blue eyes wild and wide.\n“I know she had a particular wish to see me,” I added, “and I would not\ndefer attending to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary.”\n“Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening,” remarked Eliza. I soon\nrose, quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I\nwould just step out to Bessie—who was, I dared say, in the kitchen—and\nask her to ascertain whether Mrs. Reed was disposed to receive me or\nnot to-night. I went, and having found Bessie and despatched her on my\nerrand, I proceeded to take further measures. It had heretofore been my\nhabit always to shrink from arrogance: received as I had been to-day, I\nshould, a year ago, have resolved to quit Gateshead the very next\nmorning; now, it was disclosed to me all at once that that would be a\nfoolish plan. I had taken a journey of a hundred miles to see my aunt,\nand I must stay with her till she was better—or dead: as to her\ndaughters’ pride or folly, I must put it on one side, make myself\nindependent of it. So I addressed the housekeeper; asked her to show me\na room, told her I should probably be a visitor here for a week or two,\nhad my trunk conveyed to my chamber, and followed it thither myself: I\nmet Bessie on the landing.\n“Missis is awake,” said she; “I have told her you are here: come and\nlet us see if she will know you.”\nI did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so\noften been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I\nhastened before Bessie; I softly opened the door: a shaded light stood\non the table, for it was now getting dark. There was the great\nfour-post bed with amber hangings as of old; there the toilet-table,\nthe armchair, and the footstool, at which I had a hundred times been\nsentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me uncommitted. I\nlooked into a certain corner near, half-expecting to see the slim\noutline of a once dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to\nleap out imp-like and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I\napproached the bed; I opened the curtains and leant over the high-piled\npillows.\nWell did I remember Mrs. Reed’s face, and I eagerly sought the familiar\nimage. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance\nand hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman\nin bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other\nemotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong\nyearning to forget and forgive all injuries—to be reconciled and clasp\nhands in amity.\nThe well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever—there was that\npeculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised,\nimperious, despotic eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me menace and\nhate! and how the recollection of childhood’s terrors and sorrows\nrevived as I traced its harsh line now! And yet I stooped down and\nkissed her: she looked at me.\n“Is this Jane Eyre?” she said.\n“Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, dear aunt?”\nI had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought it\nno sin to forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her\nhand which lay outside the sheet: had she pressed mine kindly, I should\nat that moment have experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable\nnatures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so\nreadily eradicated. Mrs. Reed took her hand away, and, turning her face\nrather from me, she remarked that the night was warm. Again she\nregarded me so icily, I felt at once that her opinion of me—her feeling\ntowards me—was unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony\neye—opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears—that she was resolved\nto consider me bad to the last; because to believe me good would give\nher no generous pleasure: only a sense of mortification.\nI felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to\nsubdue her—to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will.\nMy tears had risen, just as in childhood: I ordered them back to their\nsource. I brought a chair to the bed-head: I sat down and leaned over\nthe pillow.\n“You sent for me,” I said, “and I am here; and it is my intention to\nstay till I see how you get on.”\n“Oh, of course! You have seen my daughters?”\n“Yes.”\n“Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things\nover with you I have on my mind: to-night it is too late, and I have a\ndifficulty in recalling them. But there was something I wished to\nsay—let me see—”\nThe wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken\nplace in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the\nbedclothes round her; my elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed\nit down: she was at once irritated.\n“Sit up!” said she; “don’t annoy me with holding the clothes fast. Are\nyou Jane Eyre?”\n“I am Jane Eyre.”\n“I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe.\nSuch a burden to be left on my hands—and so much annoyance as she\ncaused me, daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and\nher sudden starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of\none’s movements! I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or\nlike a fiend—no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to\nget her away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The\nfever broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She, however, did\nnot die: but I said she did—I wish she had died!”\n“A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you hate her so?”\n“I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband’s only\nsister, and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family’s\ndisowning her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her\ndeath, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I\nentreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its\nmaintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it—a sickly,\nwhining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night long—not\nscreaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and moaning.\nReed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had been\nhis own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that age. He\nwould try to make my children friendly to the little beggar: the\ndarlings could not bear it, and he was angry with them when they showed\ntheir dislike. In his last illness, he had it brought continually to\nhis bedside; and but an hour before he died, he bound me by vow to keep\nthe creature. I would as soon have been charged with a pauper brat out\nof a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally weak. John does not at all\nresemble his father, and I am glad of it: John is like me and like my\nbrothers—he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting me\nwith letters for money! I have no more money to give him: we are\ngetting poor. I must send away half the servants and shut up part of\nthe house; or let it off. I can never submit to do that—yet how are we\nto get on? Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of\nmortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and always loses—poor boy! He is\nbeset by sharpers: John is sunk and degraded—his look is frightful—I\nfeel ashamed for him when I see him.”\nShe was getting much excited. “I think I had better leave her now,”\nsaid I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed.\n“Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards\nnight—in the morning she is calmer.”\nI rose. “Stop!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed, “there is another thing I wished\nto say. He threatens me—he continually threatens me with his own death,\nor mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great\nwound in his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to\na strange pass: I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How is the\nmoney to be had?”\nBessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: she\nsucceeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed,\nand sank into a dozing state. I then left her.\nMore than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with\nher. She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor\nforbade everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I got on\nas well as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold,\nindeed, at first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing, reading, or\nwriting, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister.\nGeorgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and\ntake no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for\noccupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me,\nand they served me for both.\nProvided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to\ntake a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in\nsketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened\nmomentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of\nimagination: a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a\nship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad’s\nhead, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in\na hedge-sparrow’s nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.\nOne morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to\nbe, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad\npoint, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and\nprominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour\ngave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with\nfeatures. Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that\nbrow; then followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight\nridge and full nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means\nnarrow; then a firm chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it:\nof course, some black whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted\non the temples, and waved above the forehead. Now for the eyes: I had\nleft them to the last, because they required the most careful working.\nI drew them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and\nsombre; the irids lustrous and large. “Good! but not quite the thing,”\nI thought, as I surveyed the effect: “they want more force and spirit;”\nand I wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might flash more\nbrilliantly—a happy touch or two secured success. There, I had a\nfriend’s face under my gaze; and what did it signify that those young\nladies turned their backs on me? I looked at it; I smiled at the\nspeaking likeness: I was absorbed and content.\n“Is that a portrait of some one you know?” asked Eliza, who had\napproached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head,\nand hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in\nfact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was\nthat to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced to look.\nThe other drawings pleased her much, but she called that “an ugly man.”\nThey both seemed surprised at my skill. I offered to sketch their\nportraits; and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline. Then Georgiana\nproduced her album. I promised to contribute a water-colour drawing:\nthis put her at once into good humour. She proposed a walk in the\ngrounds. Before we had been out two hours, we were deep in a\nconfidential conversation: she had favoured me with a description of\nthe brilliant winter she had spent in London two seasons ago—of the\nadmiration she had there excited—the attention she had received; and I\neven got hints of the titled conquest she had made. In the course of\nthe afternoon and evening these hints were enlarged on: various soft\nconversations were reported, and sentimental scenes represented; and,\nin short, a volume of a novel of fashionable life was that day\nimprovised by her for my benefit. The communications were renewed from\nday to day: they always ran on the same theme—herself, her loves, and\nwoes. It was strange she never once adverted either to her mother’s\nillness, or her brother’s death, or the present gloomy state of the\nfamily prospects. Her mind seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of\npast gaiety, and aspirations after dissipations to come. She passed\nabout five minutes each day in her mother’s sick-room, and no more.\nEliza still spoke little: she had evidently no time to talk. I never\nsaw a busier person than she seemed to be; yet it was difficult to say\nwhat she did: or rather, to discover any result of her diligence. She\nhad an alarm to call her up early. I know not how she occupied herself\nbefore breakfast, but after that meal she divided her time into regular\nportions, and each hour had its allotted task. Three times a day she\nstudied a little book, which I found, on inspection, was a Common\nPrayer Book. I asked her once what was the great attraction of that\nvolume, and she said, “the Rubric.” Three hours she gave to stitching,\nwith gold thread, the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large\nenough for a carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this\narticle, she informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new\nchurch lately erected near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her\ndiary; two to working by herself in the kitchen-garden; and one to the\nregulation of her accounts. She seemed to want no company; no\nconversation. I believe she was happy in her way: this routine sufficed\nfor her; and nothing annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any\nincident which forced her to vary its clockwork regularity.\nShe told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than\nusual, that John’s conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had\nbeen a source of profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said,\nsettled her mind, and formed her resolution. Her own fortune she had\ntaken care to secure; and when her mother died—and it was wholly\nimprobable, she tranquilly remarked, that she should either recover or\nlinger long—she would execute a long-cherished project: seek a\nretirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured from\ndisturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous\nworld. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her.\n“Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they never had\nhad. She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration.\nGeorgiana should take her own course; and she, Eliza, would take hers.”\nGeorgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time\nin lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, and\nwishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an\ninvitation up to town. “It would be so much better,” she said, “if she\ncould only get out of the way for a month or two, till all was over.” I\ndid not ask what she meant by “all being over,” but I suppose she\nreferred to the expected decease of her mother and the gloomy sequel of\nfuneral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of her sister’s\nindolence and complaints than if no such murmuring, lounging object had\nbeen before her. One day, however, as she put away her account-book and\nunfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus—\n“Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never\nallowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make\nno use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a\nreasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some\nother person’s strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her\nor himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out\nthat you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too, existence\nfor you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the\nworld is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must\nbe flattered—you must have music, dancing, and society—or you languish,\nyou die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you\nindependent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day;\nshare it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no\nstray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes—include\nall; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid\nregularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it has\nbegun; and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one\nvacant moment: you have had to seek no one’s company, conversation,\nsympathy, forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an independent\nbeing ought to do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer\nyou; then you will not want me or any one else, happen what may.\nNeglect it—go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling—and suffer\nthe results of your idiocy, however bad and insufferable they may be. I\ntell you this plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat\nwhat I am now about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my\nmother’s death, I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is\ncarried to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will be as separate\nas if we had never known each other. You need not think that because we\nchanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me\ndown by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this—if the whole human\nrace, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on\nthe earth, I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to the\nnew.”\nShe closed her lips.\n“You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade,”\nanswered Georgiana. “Everybody knows you are the most selfish,\nheartless creature in existence: and _I_ know your spiteful hatred\ntowards me: I have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played\nme about Lord Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you,\nto have a title, to be received into circles where you dare not show\nyour face, and so you acted the spy and informer, and ruined my\nprospects for ever.” Georgiana took out her handkerchief and blew her\nnose for an hour afterwards; Eliza sat cold, impassable, and\nassiduously industrious.\nTrue, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here were\ntwo natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably\nsavourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy\ndraught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and\nhusky a morsel for human deglutition.\nIt was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fallen asleep on the\nsofa over the perusal of a novel; Eliza was gone to attend a\nsaint’s-day service at the new church—for in matters of religion she\nwas a rigid formalist: no weather ever prevented the punctual discharge\nof what she considered her devotional duties; fair or foul, she went to\nchurch thrice every Sunday, and as often on week-days as there were\nprayers.\nI bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped, who\nlay there almost unheeded: the very servants paid her but a remittent\nattention: the hired nurse, being little looked after, would slip out\nof the room whenever she could. Bessie was faithful; but she had her\nown family to mind, and could only come occasionally to the hall. I\nfound the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected: no nurse was there;\nthe patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic; her livid face sunk in\nthe pillows: the fire was dying in the grate. I renewed the fuel,\nre-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on her who could not now gaze\non me, and then I moved away to the window.\nThe rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously:\n“One lies there,” I thought, “who will soon be beyond the war of\nearthly elements. Whither will that spirit—now struggling to quit its\nmaterial tenement—flit when at length released?”\nIn pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled her\ndying words—her faith—her doctrine of the equality of disembodied\nsouls. I was still listening in thought to her well-remembered\ntones—still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her wasted face\nand sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid deathbed, and whispered her\nlonging to be restored to her divine Father’s bosom—when a feeble voice\nmurmured from the couch behind: “Who is that?”\nI knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days: was she reviving? I went up\nto her.\n“It is I, Aunt Reed.”\n“Who—I?” was her answer. “Who are you?” looking at me with surprise and\na sort of alarm, but still not wildly. “You are quite a stranger to\nme—where is Bessie?”\n“She is at the lodge, aunt.”\n“Aunt,” she repeated. “Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the\nGibsons; and yet I know you—that face, and the eyes and forehead, are\nquiet familiar to me: you are like—why, you are like Jane Eyre!”\nI said nothing: I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my\nidentity.\n“Yet,” said she, “I am afraid it is a mistake: my thoughts deceive me.\nI wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists:\nbesides, in eight years she must be so changed.” I now gently assured\nher that I was the person she supposed and desired me to be: and seeing\nthat I was understood, and that her senses were quite collected, I\nexplained how Bessie had sent her husband to fetch me from Thornfield.\n“I am very ill, I know,” she said ere long. “I was trying to turn\nmyself a few minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb. It is as\nwell I should ease my mind before I die: what we think little of in\nhealth, burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me. Is the\nnurse here? or is there no one in the room but you?”\nI assured her we were alone.\n“Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was in\nbreaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own\nchild; the other—” she stopped. “After all, it is of no great\nimportance, perhaps,” she murmured to herself: “and then I may get\nbetter; and to humble myself so to her is painful.”\nShe made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed;\nshe seemed to experience some inward sensation—the precursor, perhaps,\nof the last pang.\n“Well, I must get it over. Eternity is before me: I had better tell\nher.—Go to my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter you will\nsee there.”\nI obeyed her directions. “Read the letter,” she said.\nIt was short, and thus conceived:—\n“MADAM,—\n“Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my niece, Jane\nEyre, and to tell me how she is? It is my intention to write shortly\nand desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence has blessed my\nendeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried and childless,\nI wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at my death\nwhatever I may have to leave.\nI am, Madam, &c., &c.,\n“JOHN EYRE, Madeira.”\nIt was dated three years back.\n“Why did I never hear of this?” I asked.\n“Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand\nin lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me,\nJane—the fury with which you once turned on me; the tone in which you\ndeclared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the world; the\nunchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that the very\nthought of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated you with\nmiserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus\nstarted up and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear as if an\nanimal that I had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes\nand cursed me in a man’s voice.—Bring me some water! Oh, make haste!”\n“Dear Mrs. Reed,” said I, as I offered her the draught she required,\n“think no more of all this, let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me\nfor my passionate language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have\npassed since that day.”\nShe heeded nothing of what I said; but when she had tasted the water\nand drawn breath, she went on thus—\n“I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be\nadopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was\nwhat I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his\ndisappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at\nLowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion—expose\nmy falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my\ntorment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which,\nbut for you, I should never have been tempted to commit.”\n“If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to\nregard me with kindness and forgiveness——”\n“You have a very bad disposition,” said she, “and one to this day I\nfeel it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be\npatient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out\nall fire and violence, I can never comprehend.”\n“My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not\nvindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to\nlove you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be\nreconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt.”\nI approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I\noppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water. As I\nlaid her down—for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she\ndrank—I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the feeble\nfingers shrank from my touch—the glazing eyes shunned my gaze.\n“Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,” I said at last, “you have my\nfull and free forgiveness: ask now for God’s, and be at peace.”\nPoor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort\nto change her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever hated\nme—dying, she must hate me still.\nThe nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half-an-hour\nlonger, hoping to see some sign of amity: but she gave none. She was\nfast relapsing into stupor; nor did her mind again rally: at twelve\no’clock that night she died. I was not present to close her eyes, nor\nwere either of her daughters. They came to tell us the next morning\nthat all was over. She was by that time laid out. Eliza and I went to\nlook at her: Georgiana, who had burst out into loud weeping, said she\ndared not go. There was stretched Sarah Reed’s once robust and active\nframe, rigid and still: her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid;\nher brow and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul.\nA strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with\ngloom and pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or\nhopeful, or subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish for _her_\nwoes—not _my_ loss—and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of\ndeath in such a form.\nEliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some minutes she\nobserved—\n“With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her\nlife was shortened by trouble.” And then a spasm constricted her mouth\nfor an instant: as it passed away she turned and left the room, and so\ndid I. Neither of us had dropt a tear.\n', 'Mr. Rochester had given me but one week’s leave of absence: yet a month\nelapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave immediately after\nthe funeral, but Georgiana entreated me to stay till she could get off\nto London, whither she was now at last invited by her uncle, Mr.\nGibson, who had come down to direct his sister’s interment and settle\nthe family affairs. Georgiana said she dreaded being left alone with\nEliza; from her she got neither sympathy in her dejection, support in\nher fears, nor aid in her preparations; so I bore with her\nfeeble-minded wailings and selfish lamentations as well as I could, and\ndid my best in sewing for her and packing her dresses. It is true, that\nwhile I worked, she would idle; and I thought to myself, “If you and I\nwere destined to live always together, cousin, we would commence\nmatters on a different footing. I should not settle tamely down into\nbeing the forbearing party; I should assign you your share of labour,\nand compel you to accomplish it, or else it should be left undone: I\nshould insist, also, on your keeping some of those drawling,\nhalf-insincere complaints hushed in your own breast. It is only because\nour connection happens to be very transitory, and comes at a peculiarly\nmournful season, that I consent thus to render it so patient and\ncompliant on my part.”\nAt last I saw Georgiana off; but now it was Eliza’s turn to request me\nto stay another week. Her plans required all her time and attention,\nshe said; she was about to depart for some unknown bourne; and all day\nlong she stayed in her own room, her door bolted within, filling\ntrunks, emptying drawers, burning papers, and holding no communication\nwith any one. She wished me to look after the house, to see callers,\nand answer notes of condolence.\nOne morning she told me I was at liberty. “And,” she added, “I am\nobliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct! There\nis some difference between living with such an one as you and with\nGeorgiana: you perform your own part in life and burden no one.\nTo-morrow,” she continued, “I set out for the Continent. I shall take\nup my abode in a religious house near Lisle—a nunnery you would call\nit; there I shall be quiet and unmolested. I shall devote myself for a\ntime to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas, and to a careful\nstudy of the workings of their system: if I find it to be, as I half\nsuspect it is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all\nthings decently and in order, I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and\nprobably take the veil.”\nI neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to\ndissuade her from it. “The vocation will fit you to a hair,” I thought:\n“much good may it do you!”\nWhen we parted, she said: “Good-bye, cousin Jane Eyre; I wish you well:\nyou have some sense.”\nI then returned: “You are not without sense, cousin Eliza; but what you\nhave, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive in a French\nconvent. However, it is not my business, and so it suits you, I don’t\nmuch care.”\n“You are in the right,” said she; and with these words we each went our\nseparate way. As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or\nher sister again, I may as well mention here, that Georgiana made an\nadvantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion, and that\nEliza actually took the veil, and is at this day superior of the\nconvent where she passed the period of her novitiate, and which she\nendowed with her fortune.\nHow people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long or\nshort, I did not know: I had never experienced the sensation. I had\nknown what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long\nwalk, to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy; and later, what it was\nto come back from church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a\ngood fire, and to be unable to get either. Neither of these returnings\nwas very pleasant or desirable: no magnet drew me to a given point,\nincreasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The return\nto Thornfield was yet to be tried.\nMy journey seemed tedious—very tedious: fifty miles one day, a night\nspent at an inn; fifty miles the next day. During the first twelve\nhours I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments; I saw her disfigured\nand discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice. I mused on\nthe funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and\nservants—few was the number of relatives—the gaping vault, the silent\nchurch, the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I\nbeheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a\nconvent cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities\nof person and character. The evening arrival at the great town of ——\nscattered these thoughts; night gave them quite another turn: laid down\non my traveller’s bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation.\nI was going back to Thornfield: but how long was I to stay there? Not\nlong; of that I was sure. I had heard from Mrs. Fairfax in the interim\nof my absence: the party at the hall was dispersed; Mr. Rochester had\nleft for London three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return in\na fortnight. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make\narrangements for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a new\ncarriage: she said the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram still seemed\nstrange to her; but from what everybody said, and from what she had\nherself seen, she could no longer doubt that the event would shortly\ntake place. “You would be strangely incredulous if you did doubt it,”\nwas my mental comment. “I don’t doubt it.”\nThe question followed, “Where was I to go?” I dreamt of Miss Ingram all\nthe night: in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing the gates of\nThornfield against me and pointing me out another road; and Mr.\nRochester looked on with his arms folded—smiling sardonically, as it\nseemed, at both her and me.\nI had not notified to Mrs. Fairfax the exact day of my return; for I\ndid not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Millcote. I proposed\nto walk the distance quietly by myself; and very quietly, after leaving\nmy box in the ostler’s care, did I slip away from the George Inn, about\nsix o’clock of a June evening, and take the old road to Thornfield: a\nroad which lay chiefly through fields, and was now little frequented.\nIt was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though fair and soft:\nthe haymakers were at work all along the road; and the sky, though far\nfrom cloudless, was such as promised well for the future: its\nblue—where blue was visible—was mild and settled, and its cloud strata\nhigh and thin. The west, too, was warm: no watery gleam chilled it—it\nseemed as if there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind its screen\nof marbled vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden redness.\nI felt glad as the road shortened before me: so glad that I stopped\nonce to ask myself what that joy meant: and to remind reason that it\nwas not to my home I was going, or to a permanent resting-place, or to\na place where fond friends looked out for me and waited my arrival.\n“Mrs. Fairfax will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure,” said I; “and\nlittle Adèle will clap her hands and jump to see you: but you know very\nwell you are thinking of another than they, and that he is not thinking\nof you.”\nBut what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?\nThese affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege of\nagain looking on Mr. Rochester, whether he looked on me or not; and\nthey added—“Hasten! hasten! be with him while you may: but a few more\ndays or weeks, at most, and you are parted from him for ever!” And then\nI strangled a new-born agony—a deformed thing which I could not\npersuade myself to own and rear—and ran on.\nThey are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the\nlabourers are just quitting their work, and returning home with their\nrakes on their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive. I have but a field\nor two to traverse, and then I shall cross the road and reach the\ngates. How full the hedges are of roses! But I have no time to gather\nany; I want to be at the house. I passed a tall briar, shooting leafy\nand flowery branches across the path; I see the narrow stile with stone\nsteps; and I see—Mr. Rochester sitting there, a book and a pencil in\nhis hand; he is writing.\nWell, he is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung: for a\nmoment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I\nshould tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or the\npower of motion in his presence. I will go back as soon as I can stir:\nI need not make an absolute fool of myself. I know another way to the\nhouse. It does not signify if I knew twenty ways; for he has seen me.\n“Hillo!” he cries; and he puts up his book and his pencil. “There you\nare! Come on, if you please.”\nI suppose I do come on; though in what fashion I know not; being\nscarcely cognisant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear calm;\nand, above all, to control the working muscles of my face—which I feel\nrebel insolently against my will, and struggle to express what I had\nresolved to conceal. But I have a veil—it is down: I may make shift yet\nto behave with decent composure.\n“And this is Jane Eyre? Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot?\nYes—just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage, and come\nclattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to steal into\nthe vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a\ndream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last\nmonth?”\n“I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead.”\n“A true Janian reply! Good angels be my guard! She comes from the other\nworld—from the abode of people who are dead; and tells me so when she\nmeets me alone here in the gloaming! If I dared, I’d touch you, to see\nif you are substance or shadow, you elf!—but I’d as soon offer to take\nhold of a blue _ignis fatuus_ light in a marsh. Truant! truant!” he\nadded, when he had paused an instant. “Absent from me a whole month,\nand forgetting me quite, I’ll be sworn!”\nI knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again, even though\nbroken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my master, and by\nthe knowledge that I was nothing to him: but there was ever in Mr.\nRochester (so at least I thought) such a wealth of the power of\ncommunicating happiness, that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered\nto stray and stranger birds like me, was to feast genially. His last\nwords were balm: they seemed to imply that it imported something to him\nwhether I forgot him or not. And he had spoken of Thornfield as my\nhome—would that it were my home!\nHe did not leave the stile, and I hardly liked to ask to go by. I\ninquired soon if he had not been to London.\n“Yes; I suppose you found that out by second-sight.”\n“Mrs. Fairfax told me in a letter.”\n“And did she inform you what I went to do?”\n“Oh, yes, sir! Everybody knew your errand.”\n“You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don’t think it\nwill suit Mrs. Rochester exactly; and whether she won’t look like Queen\nBoadicea, leaning back against those purple cushions. I wish, Jane, I\nwere a trifle better adapted to match with her externally. Tell me now,\nfairy as you are—can’t you give me a charm, or a philter, or something\nof that sort, to make me a handsome man?”\n“It would be past the power of magic, sir;” and, in thought, I added,\n“A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough;\nor rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty.”\nMr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to\nme incomprehensible: in the present instance he took no notice of my\nabrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had\nof his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think\nit too good for common purposes: it was the real sunshine of feeling—he\nshed it over me now.\n“Pass, Janet,” said he, making room for me to cross the stile: “go up\nhome, and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend’s\nthreshold.”\nAll I had now to do was to obey him in silence: no need for me to\ncolloquise further. I got over the stile without a word, and meant to\nleave him calmly. An impulse held me fast—a force turned me round. I\nsaid—or something in me said for me, and in spite of me—\n“Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad\nto get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home—my only\nhome.”\nI walked on so fast that even he could hardly have overtaken me had he\ntried. Little Adèle was half wild with delight when she saw me. Mrs.\nFairfax received me with her usual plain friendliness. Leah smiled, and\neven Sophie bid me “bon soir” with glee. This was very pleasant; there\nis no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and\nfeeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.\nI that evening shut my eyes resolutely against the future: I stopped my\nears against the voice that kept warning me of near separation and\ncoming grief. When tea was over and Mrs. Fairfax had taken her\nknitting, and I had assumed a low seat near her, and Adèle, kneeling on\nthe carpet, had nestled close up to me, and a sense of mutual affection\nseemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace, I uttered a silent\nprayer that we might not be parted far or soon; but when, as we thus\nsat, Mr. Rochester entered, unannounced, and looking at us, seemed to\ntake pleasure in the spectacle of a group so amicable—when he said he\nsupposed the old lady was all right now that she had got her adopted\ndaughter back again, and added that he saw Adèle was “prête à croquer\nsa petite maman Anglaise”—I half ventured to hope that he would, even\nafter his marriage, keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his\nprotection, and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence.\nA fortnight of dubious calm succeeded my return to Thornfield Hall.\nNothing was said of the master’s marriage, and I saw no preparation\ngoing on for such an event. Almost every day I asked Mrs. Fairfax if\nshe had yet heard anything decided: her answer was always in the\nnegative. Once she said she had actually put the question to Mr.\nRochester as to when he was going to bring his bride home; but he had\nanswered her only by a joke and one of his queer looks, and she could\nnot tell what to make of him.\nOne thing specially surprised me, and that was, there were no\njourneyings backward and forward, no visits to Ingram Park: to be sure\nit was twenty miles off, on the borders of another county; but what was\nthat distance to an ardent lover? To so practised and indefatigable a\nhorseman as Mr. Rochester, it would be but a morning’s ride. I began to\ncherish hopes I had no right to conceive: that the match was broken\noff; that rumour had been mistaken; that one or both parties had\nchanged their minds. I used to look at my master’s face to see if it\nwere sad or fierce; but I could not remember the time when it had been\nso uniformly clear of clouds or evil feelings. If, in the moments I and\nmy pupil spent with him, I lacked spirits and sank into inevitable\ndejection, he became even gay. Never had he called me more frequently\nto his presence; never been kinder to me when there—and, alas! never\nhad I loved him so well.\n', 'A splendid Midsummer shone over England: skies so pure, suns so radiant\nas were then seen in long succession, seldom favour even singly, our\nwave-girt land. It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the\nSouth, like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and lighted to rest\nthem on the cliffs of Albion. The hay was all got in; the fields round\nThornfield were green and shorn; the roads white and baked; the trees\nwere in their dark prime; hedge and wood, full-leaved and deeply\ntinted, contrasted well with the sunny hue of the cleared meadows\nbetween.\nOn Midsummer-eve, Adèle, weary with gathering wild strawberries in Hay\nLane half the day, had gone to bed with the sun. I watched her drop\nasleep, and when I left her, I sought the garden.\nIt was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four:—“Day its fervid fires\nhad wasted,” and dew fell cool on panting plain and scorched summit.\nWhere the sun had gone down in simple state—pure of the pomp of\nclouds—spread a solemn purple, burning with the light of red jewel and\nfurnace flame at one point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and\nwide, soft and still softer, over half heaven. The east had its own\ncharm or fine deep blue, and its own modest gem, a rising and solitary\nstar: soon it would boast the moon; but she was yet beneath the\nhorizon.\nI walked a while on the pavement; but a subtle, well-known scent—that\nof a cigar—stole from some window; I saw the library casement open a\nhandbreadth; I knew I might be watched thence; so I went apart into the\norchard. No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like; it\nwas full of trees, it bloomed with flowers: a very high wall shut it\nout from the court, on one side; on the other, a beech avenue screened\nit from the lawn. At the bottom was a sunk fence; its sole separation\nfrom lonely fields: a winding walk, bordered with laurels and\nterminating in a giant horse-chestnut, circled at the base by a seat,\nled down to the fence. Here one could wander unseen. While such\nhoney-dew fell, such silence reigned, such gloaming gathered, I felt as\nif I could haunt such shade for ever; but in threading the flower and\nfruit parterres at the upper part of the enclosure, enticed there by\nthe light the now rising moon cast on this more open quarter, my step\nis stayed—not by sound, not by sight, but once more by a warning\nfragrance.\nSweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose have long been\nyielding their evening sacrifice of incense: this new scent is neither\nof shrub nor flower; it is—I know it well—it is Mr. Rochester’s cigar.\nI look round and I listen. I see trees laden with ripening fruit. I\nhear a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off; no moving form\nis visible, no coming step audible; but that perfume increases: I must\nflee. I make for the wicket leading to the shrubbery, and I see Mr.\nRochester entering. I step aside into the ivy recess; he will not stay\nlong: he will soon return whence he came, and if I sit still he will\nnever see me.\nBut no—eventide is as pleasant to him as to me, and this antique garden\nas attractive; and he strolls on, now lifting the gooseberry-tree\nbranches to look at the fruit, large as plums, with which they are\nladen; now taking a ripe cherry from the wall; now stooping towards a\nknot of flowers, either to inhale their fragrance or to admire the\ndew-beads on their petals. A great moth goes humming by me; it alights\non a plant at Mr. Rochester’s foot: he sees it, and bends to examine\nit.\n“Now, he has his back towards me,” thought I, “and he is occupied too;\nperhaps, if I walk softly, I can slip away unnoticed.”\nI trode on an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel\nmight not betray me: he was standing among the beds at a yard or two\ndistant from where I had to pass; the moth apparently engaged him. “I\nshall get by very well,” I meditated. As I crossed his shadow, thrown\nlong over the garden by the moon, not yet risen high, he said quietly,\nwithout turning—\n“Jane, come and look at this fellow.”\nI had made no noise: he had not eyes behind—could his shadow feel? I\nstarted at first, and then I approached him.\n“Look at his wings,” said he, “he reminds me rather of a West Indian\ninsect; one does not often see so large and gay a night-rover in\nEngland; there! he is flown.”\nThe moth roamed away. I was sheepishly retreating also; but Mr.\nRochester followed me, and when we reached the wicket, he said—\n“Turn back: on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the house; and\nsurely no one can wish to go to bed while sunset is thus at meeting\nwith moonrise.”\nIt is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt\nenough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing\nan excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile\nword or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful\nembarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr.\nRochester in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a reason to\nallege for leaving him. I followed with lagging step, and thoughts\nbusily bent on discovering a means of extrication; but he himself\nlooked so composed and so grave also, I became ashamed of feeling any\nconfusion: the evil—if evil existent or prospective there was—seemed to\nlie with me only; his mind was unconscious and quiet.\n“Jane,” he recommenced, as we entered the laurel walk, and slowly\nstrayed down in the direction of the sunk fence and the horse-chestnut,\n“Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer, is it not?”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“You must have become in some degree attached to the house,—you, who\nhave an eye for natural beauties, and a good deal of the organ of\nAdhesiveness?”\n“I am attached to it, indeed.”\n“And though I don’t comprehend how it is, I perceive you have acquired\na degree of regard for that foolish little child Adèle, too; and even\nfor simple dame Fairfax?”\n“Yes, sir; in different ways, I have an affection for both.”\n“And would be sorry to part with them?”\n“Yes.”\n“Pity!” he said, and sighed and paused. “It is always the way of events\nin this life,” he continued presently: “no sooner have you got settled\nin a pleasant resting-place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and\nmove on, for the hour of repose is expired.”\n“Must I move on, sir?” I asked. “Must I leave Thornfield?”\n“I believe you must, Jane. I am sorry, Janet, but I believe indeed you\nmust.”\nThis was a blow: but I did not let it prostrate me.\n“Well, sir, I shall be ready when the order to march comes.”\n“It is come now—I must give it to-night.”\n“Then you _are_ going to be married, sir?”\n“Ex-act-ly—pre-cise-ly: with your usual acuteness, you have hit the\nnail straight on the head.”\n“Soon, sir?”\n“Very soon, my—that is, Miss Eyre: and you’ll remember, Jane, the first\ntime I, or Rumour, plainly intimated to you that it was my intention to\nput my old bachelor’s neck into the sacred noose, to enter into the\nholy estate of matrimony—to take Miss Ingram to my bosom, in short\n(she’s an extensive armful: but that’s not to the point—one can’t have\ntoo much of such a very excellent thing as my beautiful Blanche): well,\nas I was saying—listen to me, Jane! You’re not turning your head to\nlook after more moths, are you? That was only a lady-clock, child,\n‘flying away home.’ I wish to remind you that it was you who first said\nto me, with that discretion I respect in you—with that foresight,\nprudence, and humility which befit your responsible and dependent\nposition—that in case I married Miss Ingram, both you and little Adèle\nhad better trot forthwith. I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in\nthis suggestion on the character of my beloved; indeed, when you are\nfar away, Janet, I’ll try to forget it: I shall notice only its wisdom;\nwhich is such that I have made it my law of action. Adèle must go to\nschool; and you, Miss Eyre, must get a new situation.”\n“Yes, sir, I will advertise immediately: and meantime, I suppose—” I\nwas going to say, “I suppose I may stay here, till I find another\nshelter to betake myself to:” but I stopped, feeling it would not do to\nrisk a long sentence, for my voice was not quite under command.\n“In about a month I hope to be a bridegroom,” continued Mr. Rochester;\n“and in the interim, I shall myself look out for employment and an\nasylum for you.”\n“Thank you, sir; I am sorry to give—”\n“Oh, no need to apologise! I consider that when a dependent does her\nduty as well as you have done yours, she has a sort of claim upon her\nemployer for any little assistance he can conveniently render her;\nindeed I have already, through my future mother-in-law, heard of a\nplace that I think will suit: it is to undertake the education of the\nfive daughters of Mrs. Dionysius O’Gall of Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught,\nIreland. You’ll like Ireland, I think: they’re such warm-hearted people\nthere, they say.”\n“It is a long way off, sir.”\n“No matter—a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the\ndistance.”\n“Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier—”\n“From what, Jane?”\n“From England and from Thornfield: and—”\n“Well?”\n“From _you_, sir.”\nI said this almost involuntarily, and, with as little sanction of free\nwill, my tears gushed out. I did not cry so as to be heard, however; I\navoided sobbing. The thought of Mrs. O’Gall and Bitternutt Lodge struck\ncold to my heart; and colder the thought of all the brine and foam,\ndestined, as it seemed, to rush between me and the master at whose side\nI now walked, and coldest the remembrance of the wider ocean—wealth,\ncaste, custom intervened between me and what I naturally and inevitably\nloved.\n“It is a long way,” I again said.\n“It is, to be sure; and when you get to Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught,\nIreland, I shall never see you again, Jane: that’s morally certain. I\nnever go over to Ireland, not having myself much of a fancy for the\ncountry. We have been good friends, Jane; have we not?”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“And when friends are on the eve of separation, they like to spend the\nlittle time that remains to them close to each other. Come! we’ll talk\nover the voyage and the parting quietly half-an-hour or so, while the\nstars enter into their shining life up in heaven yonder: here is the\nchestnut tree: here is the bench at its old roots. Come, we will sit\nthere in peace to-night, though we should never more be destined to sit\nthere together.” He seated me and himself.\n“It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little\nfriend on such weary travels: but if I can’t do better, how is it to be\nhelped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?”\nI could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still.\n“Because,” he said, “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to\nyou—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string\nsomewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a\nsimilar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little\nframe. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of\nland come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be\nsnapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding\ninwardly. As for you,—you’d forget me.”\n“That I _never_ should, sir: you know—” Impossible to proceed.\n“Jane, do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood? Listen!”\nIn listening, I sobbed convulsively; for I could repress what I endured\nno longer; I was obliged to yield, and I was shaken from head to foot\nwith acute distress. When I did speak, it was only to express an\nimpetuous wish that I had never been born, or never come to Thornfield.\n“Because you are sorry to leave it?”\nThe vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was\nclaiming mastery, and struggling for full sway, and asserting a right\nto predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last: yes,—and\nto speak.\n“I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield:—I love it, because I\nhave lived in it a full and delightful life,—momentarily at least. I\nhave not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been\nburied with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of\ncommunion with what is bright and energetic and high. I have talked,\nface to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight in,—with an\noriginal, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr.\nRochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I\nabsolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of\ndeparture; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.”\n“Where do you see the necessity?” he asked suddenly.\n“Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.”\n“In what shape?”\n“In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman,—your bride.”\n“My bride! What bride? I have no bride!”\n“But you will have.”\n“Yes;—I will!—I will!” He set his teeth.\n“Then I must go:—you have said it yourself.”\n“No: you must stay! I swear it—and the oath shall be kept.”\n“I tell you I must go!” I retorted, roused to something like passion.\n“Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an\nautomaton?—a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel\nof bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from\nmy cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I\nam soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as\nyou,—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty\nand much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as\nit is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the\nmedium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;—it is my\nspirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through\nthe grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!”\n“As we are!” repeated Mr. Rochester—“so,” he added, enclosing me in his\narms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: “so,\nJane!”\n“Yes, so, sir,” I rejoined: “and yet not so; for you are a married\nman—or as good as a married man, and wed to one inferior to you—to one\nwith whom you have no sympathy—whom I do not believe you truly love;\nfor I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union:\ntherefore I am better than you—let me go!”\n“Where, Jane? To Ireland?”\n“Yes—to Ireland. I have spoken my mind, and can go anywhere now.”\n“Jane, be still; don’t struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that is\nrending its own plumage in its desperation.”\n“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an\nindependent will, which I now exert to leave you.”\nAnother effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him.\n“And your will shall decide your destiny,” he said: “I offer you my\nhand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.”\n“You play a farce, which I merely laugh at.”\n“I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and\nbest earthly companion.”\n“For that fate you have already made your choice, and must abide by\nit.”\n“Jane, be still a few moments: you are over-excited: I will be still\ntoo.”\nA waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through\nthe boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away—away—to an indefinite\ndistance—it died. The nightingale’s song was then the only voice of the\nhour: in listening to it, I again wept. Mr. Rochester sat quiet,\nlooking at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke;\nhe at last said—\n“Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one another.”\n“I will never again come to your side: I am torn away now, and cannot\nreturn.”\n“But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry.”\nI was silent: I thought he mocked me.\n“Come, Jane—come hither.”\n“Your bride stands between us.”\nHe rose, and with a stride reached me.\n“My bride is here,” he said, again drawing me to him, “because my equal\nis here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?”\nStill I did not answer, and still I writhed myself from his grasp: for\nI was still incredulous.\n“Do you doubt me, Jane?”\n“Entirely.”\n“You have no faith in me?”\n“Not a whit.”\n“Am I a liar in your eyes?” he asked passionately. “Little sceptic, you\n_shall_ be convinced. What love have I for Miss Ingram? None: and that\nyou know. What love has she for me? None: as I have taken pains to\nprove: I caused a rumour to reach her that my fortune was not a third\nof what was supposed, and after that I presented myself to see the\nresult; it was coldness both from her and her mother. I would not—I\ncould not—marry Miss Ingram. You—you strange, you almost unearthly\nthing!—I love as my own flesh. You—poor and obscure, and small and\nplain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband.”\n“What, me!” I ejaculated, beginning in his earnestness—and especially\nin his incivility—to credit his sincerity: “me who have not a friend in\nthe world but you—if you are my friend: not a shilling but what you\nhave given me?”\n“You, Jane, I must have you for my own—entirely my own. Will you be\nmine? Say yes, quickly.”\n“Mr. Rochester, let me look at your face: turn to the moonlight.”\n“Why?”\n“Because I want to read your countenance—turn!”\n“There! you will find it scarcely more legible than a crumpled,\nscratched page. Read on: only make haste, for I suffer.”\nHis face was very much agitated and very much flushed, and there were\nstrong workings in the features, and strange gleams in the eyes.\n“Oh, Jane, you torture me!” he exclaimed. “With that searching and yet\nfaithful and generous look, you torture me!”\n“How can I do that? If you are true, and your offer real, my only\nfeelings to you must be gratitude and devotion—they cannot torture.”\n“Gratitude!” he ejaculated; and added wildly—“Jane accept me quickly.\nSay, Edward—give me my name—Edward—I will marry you.”\n“Are you in earnest? Do you truly love me? Do you sincerely wish me to\nbe your wife?”\n“I do; and if an oath is necessary to satisfy you, I swear it.”\n“Then, sir, I will marry you.”\n“Edward—my little wife!”\n“Dear Edward!”\n“Come to me—come to me entirely now,” said he; and added, in his\ndeepest tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine, “Make\nmy happiness—I will make yours.”\n“God pardon me!” he subjoined ere long; “and man meddle not with me: I\nhave her, and will hold her.”\n“There is no one to meddle, sir. I have no kindred to interfere.”\n“No—that is the best of it,” he said. And if I had loved him less I\nshould have thought his accent and look of exultation savage; but,\nsitting by him, roused from the nightmare of parting—called to the\nparadise of union—I thought only of the bliss given me to drink in so\nabundant a flow. Again and again he said, “Are you happy, Jane?” And\nagain and again I answered, “Yes.” After which he murmured, “It will\natone—it will atone. Have I not found her friendless, and cold, and\ncomfortless? Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace her? Is there\nnot love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at\nGod’s tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world’s\njudgment—I wash my hands thereof. For man’s opinion—I defy it.”\nBut what had befallen the night? The moon was not yet set, and we were\nall in shadow: I could scarcely see my master’s face, near as I was.\nAnd what ailed the chestnut tree? it writhed and groaned; while wind\nroared in the laurel walk, and came sweeping over us.\n“We must go in,” said Mr. Rochester: “the weather changes. I could have\nsat with thee till morning, Jane.”\n“And so,” thought I, “could I with you.” I should have said so,\nperhaps, but a livid, vivid spark leapt out of a cloud at which I was\nlooking, and there was a crack, a crash, and a close rattling peal; and\nI thought only of hiding my dazzled eyes against Mr. Rochester’s\nshoulder.\nThe rain rushed down. He hurried me up the walk, through the grounds,\nand into the house; but we were quite wet before we could pass the\nthreshold. He was taking off my shawl in the hall, and shaking the\nwater out of my loosened hair, when Mrs. Fairfax emerged from her room.\nI did not observe her at first, nor did Mr. Rochester. The lamp was\nlit. The clock was on the stroke of twelve.\n“Hasten to take off your wet things,” said he; “and before you go,\ngood-night—good-night, my darling!”\nHe kissed me repeatedly. When I looked up, on leaving his arms, there\nstood the widow, pale, grave, and amazed. I only smiled at her, and ran\nupstairs. “Explanation will do for another time,” thought I. Still,\nwhen I reached my chamber, I felt a pang at the idea she should even\ntemporarily misconstrue what she had seen. But joy soon effaced every\nother feeling; and loud as the wind blew, near and deep as the thunder\ncrashed, fierce and frequent as the lightning gleamed, cataract-like as\nthe rain fell during a storm of two hours’ duration, I experienced no\nfear and little awe. Mr. Rochester came thrice to my door in the course\nof it, to ask if I was safe and tranquil: and that was comfort, that\nwas strength for anything.\nBefore I left my bed in the morning, little Adèle came running in to\ntell me that the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had\nbeen struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away.\n', 'As I rose and dressed, I thought over what had happened, and wondered\nif it were a dream. I could not be certain of the reality till I had\nseen Mr. Rochester again, and heard him renew his words of love and\npromise.\nWhile arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it\nwas no longer plain: there was hope in its aspect and life in its\ncolour; and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition,\nand borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple. I had often been unwilling\nto look at my master, because I feared he could not be pleased at my\nlook; but I was sure I might lift my face to his now, and not cool his\naffection by its expression. I took a plain but clean and light summer\ndress from my drawer and put it on: it seemed no attire had ever so\nwell become me, because none had I ever worn in so blissful a mood.\nI was not surprised, when I ran down into the hall, to see that a\nbrilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the night; and\nto feel, through the open glass door, the breathing of a fresh and\nfragrant breeze. Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy. A\nbeggar-woman and her little boy—pale, ragged objects both—were coming\nup the walk, and I ran down and gave them all the money I happened to\nhave in my purse—some three or four shillings: good or bad, they must\npartake of my jubilee. The rooks cawed, and blither birds sang; but\nnothing was so merry or so musical as my own rejoicing heart.\nMrs. Fairfax surprised me by looking out of the window with a sad\ncountenance, and saying gravely—“Miss Eyre, will you come to\nbreakfast?” During the meal she was quiet and cool: but I could not\nundeceive her then. I must wait for my master to give explanations; and\nso must she. I ate what I could, and then I hastened upstairs. I met\nAdèle leaving the schoolroom.\n“Where are you going? It is time for lessons.”\n“Mr. Rochester has sent me away to the nursery.”\n“Where is he?”\n“In there,” pointing to the apartment she had left; and I went in, and\nthere he stood.\n“Come and bid me good-morning,” said he. I gladly advanced; and it was\nnot merely a cold word now, or even a shake of the hand that I\nreceived, but an embrace and a kiss. It seemed natural: it seemed\ngenial to be so well loved, so caressed by him.\n“Jane, you look blooming, and smiling, and pretty,” said he: “truly\npretty this morning. Is this my pale, little elf? Is this my\nmustard-seed? This little sunny-faced girl with the dimpled cheek and\nrosy lips; the satin-smooth hazel hair, and the radiant hazel eyes?” (I\nhad green eyes, reader; but you must excuse the mistake: for him they\nwere new-dyed, I suppose.)\n“It is Jane Eyre, sir.”\n“Soon to be Jane Rochester,” he added: “in four weeks, Janet; not a day\nmore. Do you hear that?”\nI did, and I could not quite comprehend it: it made me giddy. The\nfeeling, the announcement sent through me, was something stronger than\nwas consistent with joy—something that smote and stunned: it was, I\nthink, almost fear.\n“You blushed, and now you are white, Jane: what is that for?”\n“Because you gave me a new name—Jane Rochester; and it seems so\nstrange.”\n“Yes, Mrs. Rochester,” said he; “young Mrs. Rochester—Fairfax\nRochester’s girl-bride.”\n“It can never be, sir; it does not sound likely. Human beings never\nenjoy complete happiness in this world. I was not born for a different\ndestiny to the rest of my species: to imagine such a lot befalling me\nis a fairy tale—a day-dream.”\n“Which I can and will realise. I shall begin to-day. This morning I\nwrote to my banker in London to send me certain jewels he has in his\nkeeping,—heirlooms for the ladies of Thornfield. In a day or two I hope\nto pour them into your lap: for every privilege, every attention shall\nbe yours that I would accord a peer’s daughter, if about to marry her.”\n“Oh, sir!—never rain jewels! I don’t like to hear them spoken of.\nJewels for Jane Eyre sounds unnatural and strange: I would rather not\nhave them.”\n“I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck, and the circlet\non your forehead,—which it will become: for nature, at least, has\nstamped her patent of nobility on this brow, Jane; and I will clasp the\nbracelets on these fine wrists, and load these fairy-like fingers with\nrings.”\n“No, no, sir! think of other subjects, and speak of other things, and\nin another strain. Don’t address me as if I were a beauty; I am your\nplain, Quakerish governess.”\n“You are a beauty in my eyes, and a beauty just after the desire of my\nheart,—delicate and aërial.”\n“Puny and insignificant, you mean. You are dreaming, sir,—or you are\nsneering. For God’s sake, don’t be ironical!”\n“I will make the world acknowledge you a beauty, too,” he went on,\nwhile I really became uneasy at the strain he had adopted, because I\nfelt he was either deluding himself or trying to delude me. “I will\nattire my Jane in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair;\nand I will cover the head I love best with a priceless veil.”\n“And then you won’t know me, sir; and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any\nlonger, but an ape in a harlequin’s jacket—a jay in borrowed plumes. I\nwould as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings,\nas myself clad in a court-lady’s robe; and I don’t call you handsome,\nsir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you.\nDon’t flatter me.”\nHe pursued his theme, however, without noticing my deprecation. “This\nvery day I shall take you in the carriage to Millcote, and you must\nchoose some dresses for yourself. I told you we shall be married in\nfour weeks. The wedding is to take place quietly, in the church down\nbelow yonder; and then I shall waft you away at once to town. After a\nbrief stay there, I shall bear my treasure to regions nearer the sun:\nto French vineyards and Italian plains; and she shall see whatever is\nfamous in old story and in modern record: she shall taste, too, of the\nlife of cities; and she shall learn to value herself by just comparison\nwith others.”\n“Shall I travel?—and with you, sir?”\n“You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples: at Florence, Venice, and\nVienna: all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by you:\nwherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph’s foot shall step also. Ten\nyears since, I flew through Europe half mad; with disgust, hate, and\nrage as my companions: now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed, with\na very angel as my comforter.”\nI laughed at him as he said this. “I am not an angel,” I asserted; “and\nI will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must\nneither expect nor exact anything celestial of me—for you will not get\nit, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all\nanticipate.”\n“What do you anticipate of me?”\n“For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now,—a very little\nwhile; and then you will turn cool; and then you will be capricious;\nand then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you:\nbut when you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me\nagain,—_like_ me, I say, not _love_ me. I suppose your love will\neffervesce in six months, or less. I have observed in books written by\nmen, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband’s ardour\nextends. Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope never to\nbecome quite distasteful to my dear master.”\n“Distasteful! and like you again! I think I shall like you again, and\nyet again: and I will make you confess I do not only _like_, but _love_\nyou—with truth, fervour, constancy.”\n“Yet are you not capricious, sir?”\n“To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I\nfind out they have neither souls nor hearts—when they open to me a\nperspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility,\ncoarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue,\nto the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not\nbreak—at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent—I am ever\ntender and true.”\n“Had you ever experience of such a character, sir? Did you ever love\nsuch an one?”\n“I love it now.”\n“But before me: if I, indeed, in any respect come up to your difficult\nstandard?”\n“I never met your likeness. Jane, you please me, and you master me—you\nseem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I\nam twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up\nmy arm to my heart. I am influenced—conquered; and the influence is\nsweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery\nbeyond any triumph I can win. Why do you smile, Jane? What does that\ninexplicable, that uncanny turn of countenance mean?”\n“I was thinking, sir (you will excuse the idea; it was involuntary), I\nwas thinking of Hercules and Samson with their charmers—”\n“You were, you little elfish—”\n“Hush, sir! You don’t talk very wisely just now; any more than those\ngentlemen acted very wisely. However, had they been married, they would\nno doubt by their severity as husbands have made up for their softness\nas suitors; and so will you, I fear. I wonder how you will answer me a\nyear hence, should I ask a favour it does not suit your convenience or\npleasure to grant.”\n“Ask me something now, Janet,—the least thing: I desire to be\nentreated—”\n“Indeed I will, sir; I have my petition all ready.”\n“Speak! But if you look up and smile with that countenance, I shall\nswear concession before I know to what, and that will make a fool of\nme.”\n“Not at all, sir; I ask only this: don’t send for the jewels, and don’t\ncrown me with roses: you might as well put a border of gold lace round\nthat plain pocket handkerchief you have there.”\n“I might as well ‘gild refined gold.’ I know it: your request is\ngranted then—for the time. I will remand the order I despatched to my\nbanker. But you have not yet asked for anything; you have prayed a gift\nto be withdrawn: try again.”\n“Well then, sir, have the goodness to gratify my curiosity, which is\nmuch piqued on one point.”\nHe looked disturbed. “What? what?” he said hastily. “Curiosity is a\ndangerous petition: it is well I have not taken a vow to accord every\nrequest—”\n“But there can be no danger in complying with this, sir.”\n“Utter it, Jane: but I wish that instead of a mere inquiry into,\nperhaps, a secret, it was a wish for half my estate.”\n“Now, King Ahasuerus! What do I want with half your estate? Do you\nthink I am a Jew-usurer, seeking good investment in land? I would much\nrather have all your confidence. You will not exclude me from your\nconfidence if you admit me to your heart?”\n“You are welcome to all my confidence that is worth having, Jane; but\nfor God’s sake, don’t desire a useless burden! Don’t long for\npoison—don’t turn out a downright Eve on my hands!”\n“Why not, sir? You have just been telling me how much you liked to be\nconquered, and how pleasant over-persuasion is to you. Don’t you think\nI had better take advantage of the confession, and begin and coax and\nentreat—even cry and be sulky if necessary—for the sake of a mere essay\nof my power?”\n“I dare you to any such experiment. Encroach, presume, and the game is\nup.”\n“Is it, sir? You soon give in. How stern you look now! Your eyebrows\nhave become as thick as my finger, and your forehead resembles what, in\nsome very astonishing poetry, I once saw styled, ‘a blue-piled\nthunderloft.’ That will be your married look, sir, I suppose?”\n“If that will be _your_ married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give\nup the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what\nhad you to ask, thing,—out with it?”\n“There, you are less than civil now; and I like rudeness a great deal\nbetter than flattery. I had rather be a _thing_ than an angel. This is\nwhat I have to ask,—Why did you take such pains to make me believe you\nwished to marry Miss Ingram?”\n“Is that all? Thank God it is no worse!” And now he unknit his black\nbrows; looked down, smiling at me, and stroked my hair, as if well\npleased at seeing a danger averted. “I think I may confess,” he\ncontinued, “even although I should make you a little indignant,\nJane—and I have seen what a fire-spirit you can be when you are\nindignant. You glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you\nmutinied against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal. Janet,\nby-the-bye, it was you who made me the offer.”\n“Of course I did. But to the point if you please, sir—Miss Ingram?”\n“Well, I feigned courtship of Miss Ingram, because I wished to render\nyou as madly in love with me as I was with you; and I knew jealousy\nwould be the best ally I could call in for the furtherance of that\nend.”\n“Excellent! Now you are small—not one whit bigger than the end of my\nlittle finger. It was a burning shame and a scandalous disgrace to act\nin that way. Did you think nothing of Miss Ingram’s feelings, sir?”\n“Her feelings are concentrated in one—pride; and that needs humbling.\nWere you jealous, Jane?”\n“Never mind, Mr. Rochester: it is in no way interesting to you to know\nthat. Answer me truly once more. Do you think Miss Ingram will not\nsuffer from your dishonest coquetry? Won’t she feel forsaken and\ndeserted?”\n“Impossible!—when I told you how she, on the contrary, deserted me: the\nidea of my insolvency cooled, or rather extinguished, her flame in a\nmoment.”\n“You have a curious, designing mind, Mr. Rochester. I am afraid your\nprinciples on some points are eccentric.”\n“My principles were never trained, Jane: they may have grown a little\nawry for want of attention.”\n“Once again, seriously; may I enjoy the great good that has been\nvouchsafed to me, without fearing that any one else is suffering the\nbitter pain I myself felt a while ago?”\n“That you may, my good little girl: there is not another being in the\nworld has the same pure love for me as yourself—for I lay that pleasant\nunction to my soul, Jane, a belief in your affection.”\nI turned my lips to the hand that lay on my shoulder. I loved him very\nmuch—more than I could trust myself to say—more than words had power to\nexpress.\n“Ask something more,” he said presently; “it is my delight to be\nentreated, and to yield.”\nI was again ready with my request. “Communicate your intentions to Mrs.\nFairfax, sir: she saw me with you last night in the hall, and she was\nshocked. Give her some explanation before I see her again. It pains me\nto be misjudged by so good a woman.”\n“Go to your room, and put on your bonnet,” he replied. “I mean you to\naccompany me to Millcote this morning; and while you prepare for the\ndrive, I will enlighten the old lady’s understanding. Did she think,\nJanet, you had given the world for love, and considered it well lost?”\n“I believe she thought I had forgotten my station, and yours, sir.”\n“Station! station!—your station is in my heart, and on the necks of\nthose who would insult you, now or hereafter.—Go.”\nI was soon dressed; and when I heard Mr. Rochester quit Mrs. Fairfax’s\nparlour, I hurried down to it. The old lady had been reading her\nmorning portion of Scripture—the Lesson for the day; her Bible lay open\nbefore her, and her spectacles were upon it. Her occupation, suspended\nby Mr. Rochester’s announcement, seemed now forgotten: her eyes, fixed\non the blank wall opposite, expressed the surprise of a quiet mind\nstirred by unwonted tidings. Seeing me, she roused herself: she made a\nsort of effort to smile, and framed a few words of congratulation; but\nthe smile expired, and the sentence was abandoned unfinished. She put\nup her spectacles, shut the Bible, and pushed her chair back from the\ntable.\n“I feel so astonished,” she began, “I hardly know what to say to you,\nMiss Eyre. I have surely not been dreaming, have I? Sometimes I half\nfall asleep when I am sitting alone and fancy things that have never\nhappened. It has seemed to me more than once when I have been in a\ndoze, that my dear husband, who died fifteen years since, has come in\nand sat down beside me; and that I have even heard him call me by my\nname, Alice, as he used to do. Now, can you tell me whether it is\nactually true that Mr. Rochester has asked you to marry him? Don’t\nlaugh at me. But I really thought he came in here five minutes ago, and\nsaid that in a month you would be his wife.”\n“He has said the same thing to me,” I replied.\n“He has! Do you believe him? Have you accepted him?”\n“Yes.”\nShe looked at me bewildered.\n“I could never have thought it. He is a proud man: all the Rochesters\nwere proud: and his father, at least, liked money. He, too, has always\nbeen called careful. He means to marry you?”\n“He tells me so.”\nShe surveyed my whole person: in her eyes I read that they had there\nfound no charm powerful enough to solve the enigma.\n“It passes me!” she continued; “but no doubt it is true since you say\nso. How it will answer, I cannot tell: I really don’t know. Equality of\nposition and fortune is often advisable in such cases; and there are\ntwenty years of difference in your ages. He might almost be your\nfather.”\n“No, indeed, Mrs. Fairfax!” exclaimed I, nettled; “he is nothing like\nmy father! No one, who saw us together, would suppose it for an\ninstant. Mr. Rochester looks as young, and is as young, as some men at\nfive-and-twenty.”\n“Is it really for love he is going to marry you?” she asked.\nI was so hurt by her coldness and scepticism, that the tears rose to my\neyes.\n“I am sorry to grieve you,” pursued the widow; “but you are so young,\nand so little acquainted with men, I wished to put you on your guard.\nIt is an old saying that ‘all is not gold that glitters;’ and in this\ncase I do fear there will be something found to be different to what\neither you or I expect.”\n“Why?—am I a monster?” I said: “is it impossible that Mr. Rochester\nshould have a sincere affection for me?”\n“No: you are very well; and much improved of late; and Mr. Rochester, I\ndaresay, is fond of you. I have always noticed that you were a sort of\npet of his. There are times when, for your sake, I have been a little\nuneasy at his marked preference, and have wished to put you on your\nguard: but I did not like to suggest even the possibility of wrong. I\nknew such an idea would shock, perhaps offend you; and you were so\ndiscreet, and so thoroughly modest and sensible, I hoped you might be\ntrusted to protect yourself. Last night I cannot tell you what I\nsuffered when I sought all over the house, and could find you nowhere,\nnor the master either; and then, at twelve o’clock, saw you come in\nwith him.”\n“Well, never mind that now,” I interrupted impatiently; “it is enough\nthat all was right.”\n“I hope all will be right in the end,” she said: “but believe me, you\ncannot be too careful. Try and keep Mr. Rochester at a distance:\ndistrust yourself as well as him. Gentlemen in his station are not\naccustomed to marry their governesses.”\nI was growing truly irritated: happily, Adèle ran in.\n“Let me go,—let me go to Millcote too!” she cried. “Mr. Rochester\nwon’t: though there is so much room in the new carriage. Beg him to let\nme go, mademoiselle.”\n“That I will, Adèle;” and I hastened away with her, glad to quit my\ngloomy monitress. The carriage was ready: they were bringing it round\nto the front, and my master was pacing the pavement, Pilot following\nhim backwards and forwards.\n“Adèle may accompany us, may she not, sir?”\n“I told her no. I’ll have no brats!—I’ll have only you.”\n“Do let her go, Mr. Rochester, if you please: it would be better.”\n“Not it: she will be a restraint.”\nHe was quite peremptory, both in look and voice. The chill of Mrs.\nFairfax’s warnings, and the damp of her doubts were upon me: something\nof unsubstantiality and uncertainty had beset my hopes. I half lost the\nsense of power over him. I was about mechanically to obey him, without\nfurther remonstrance; but as he helped me into the carriage, he looked\nat my face.\n“What is the matter?” he asked; “all the sunshine is gone. Do you\nreally wish the bairn to go? Will it annoy you if she is left behind?”\n“I would far rather she went, sir.”\n“Then off for your bonnet, and back like a flash of lightning!” cried\nhe to Adèle.\nShe obeyed him with what speed she might.\n“After all, a single morning’s interruption will not matter much,” said\nhe, “when I mean shortly to claim you—your thoughts, conversation, and\ncompany—for life.”\nAdèle, when lifted in, commenced kissing me, by way of expressing her\ngratitude for my intercession: she was instantly stowed away into a\ncorner on the other side of him. She then peeped round to where I sat;\nso stern a neighbour was too restrictive: to him, in his present\nfractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask of him any\ninformation.\n“Let her come to me,” I entreated: “she will, perhaps, trouble you,\nsir: there is plenty of room on this side.”\nHe handed her over as if she had been a lapdog. “I’ll send her to\nschool yet,” he said, but now he was smiling.\nAdèle heard him, and asked if she was to go to school “sans\nmademoiselle?”\n“Yes,” he replied, “absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take\nmademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the\nwhite valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with\nme there, and only me.”\n“She will have nothing to eat: you will starve her,” observed Adèle.\n“I shall gather manna for her morning and night: the plains and\nhillsides in the moon are bleached with manna, Adèle.”\n“She will want to warm herself: what will she do for a fire?”\n“Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I’ll carry\nher up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater.”\n“Oh, qu’elle y sera mal—peu comfortable! And her clothes, they will\nwear out: how can she get new ones?”\nMr. Rochester professed to be puzzled. “Hem!” said he. “What would you\ndo, Adèle? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a white or a\npink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And one could cut a pretty\nenough scarf out of a rainbow.”\n“She is far better as she is,” concluded Adèle, after musing some time:\n“besides, she would get tired of living with only you in the moon. If I\nwere mademoiselle, I would never consent to go with you.”\n“She has consented: she has pledged her word.”\n“But you can’t get her there; there is no road to the moon: it is all\nair; and neither you nor she can fly.”\n“Adèle, look at that field.” We were now outside Thornfield gates, and\nbowling lightly along the smooth road to Millcote, where the dust was\nwell laid by the thunderstorm, and, where the low hedges and lofty\ntimber trees on each side glistened green and rain-refreshed.\n“In that field, Adèle, I was walking late one evening about a fortnight\nsince—the evening of the day you helped me to make hay in the orchard\nmeadows; and, as I was tired with raking swaths, I sat down to rest me\non a stile; and there I took out a little book and a pencil, and began\nto write about a misfortune that befell me long ago, and a wish I had\nfor happy days to come: I was writing away very fast, though daylight\nwas fading from the leaf, when something came up the path and stopped\ntwo yards off me. I looked at it. It was a little thing with a veil of\ngossamer on its head. I beckoned it to come near me; it stood soon at\nmy knee. I never spoke to it, and it never spoke to me, in words; but I\nread its eyes, and it read mine; and our speechless colloquy was to\nthis effect—\n“It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said; and its errand was to\nmake me happy: I must go with it out of the common world to a lonely\nplace—such as the moon, for instance—and it nodded its head towards her\nhorn, rising over Hay-hill: it told me of the alabaster cave and silver\nvale where we might live. I said I should like to go; but reminded it,\nas you did me, that I had no wings to fly.\n“‘Oh,’ returned the fairy, ‘that does not signify! Here is a talisman\nwill remove all difficulties;’ and she held out a pretty gold ring.\n‘Put it,’ she said, ‘on the fourth finger of my left hand, and I am\nyours, and you are mine; and we shall leave earth, and make our own\nheaven yonder.’ She nodded again at the moon. The ring, Adèle, is in my\nbreeches-pocket, under the disguise of a sovereign: but I mean soon to\nchange it to a ring again.”\n“But what has mademoiselle to do with it? I don’t care for the fairy:\nyou said it was mademoiselle you would take to the moon?”\n“Mademoiselle is a fairy,” he said, whispering mysteriously. Whereupon\nI told her not to mind his badinage; and she, on her part, evinced a\nfund of genuine French scepticism: denominating Mr. Rochester “un vrai\nmenteur,” and assuring him that she made no account whatever of his\n“contes de fée,” and that “du reste, il n’y avait pas de fées, et quand\nmême il y en avait:” she was sure they would never appear to him, nor\never give him rings, or offer to live with him in the moon.\nThe hour spent at Millcote was a somewhat harassing one to me. Mr.\nRochester obliged me to go to a certain silk warehouse: there I was\nordered to choose half-a-dozen dresses. I hated the business, I begged\nleave to defer it: no—it should be gone through with now. By dint of\nentreaties expressed in energetic whispers, I reduced the half-dozen to\ntwo: these however, he vowed he would select himself. With anxiety I\nwatched his eye rove over the gay stores: he fixed on a rich silk of\nthe most brilliant amethyst dye, and a superb pink satin. I told him in\na new series of whispers, that he might as well buy me a gold gown and\na silver bonnet at once: I should certainly never venture to wear his\nchoice. With infinite difficulty, for he was stubborn as a stone, I\npersuaded him to make an exchange in favour of a sober black satin and\npearl-grey silk. “It might pass for the present,” he said; “but he\nwould yet see me glittering like a parterre.”\nGlad was I to get him out of the silk warehouse, and then out of a\njeweller’s shop: the more he bought me, the more my cheek burned with a\nsense of annoyance and degradation. As we re-entered the carriage, and\nI sat back feverish and fagged, I remembered what, in the hurry of\nevents, dark and bright, I had wholly forgotten—the letter of my uncle,\nJohn Eyre, to Mrs. Reed: his intention to adopt me and make me his\nlegatee. “It would, indeed, be a relief,” I thought, “if I had ever so\nsmall an independency; I never can bear being dressed like a doll by\nMr. Rochester, or sitting like a second Danae with the golden shower\nfalling daily round me. I will write to Madeira the moment I get home,\nand tell my uncle John I am going to be married, and to whom: if I had\nbut a prospect of one day bringing Mr. Rochester an accession of\nfortune, I could better endure to be kept by him now.” And somewhat\nrelieved by this idea (which I failed not to execute that day), I\nventured once more to meet my master’s and lover’s eye, which most\npertinaciously sought mine, though I averted both face and gaze. He\nsmiled; and I thought his smile was such as a sultan might, in a\nblissful and fond moment, bestow on a slave his gold and gems had\nenriched: I crushed his hand, which was ever hunting mine, vigorously,\nand thrust it back to him red with the passionate pressure.\n“You need not look in that way,” I said; “if you do, I’ll wear nothing\nbut my old Lowood frocks to the end of the chapter. I’ll be married in\nthis lilac gingham: you may make a dressing-gown for yourself out of\nthe pearl-grey silk, and an infinite series of waistcoats out of the\nblack satin.”\nHe chuckled; he rubbed his hands. “Oh, it is rich to see and hear her!”\nhe exclaimed. “Is she original? Is she piquant? I would not exchange\nthis one little English girl for the Grand Turk’s whole seraglio,\ngazelle-eyes, houri forms, and all!”\nThe Eastern allusion bit me again. “I’ll not stand you an inch in the\nstead of a seraglio,” I said; “so don’t consider me an equivalent for\none. If you have a fancy for anything in that line, away with you, sir,\nto the bazaars of Stamboul without delay, and lay out in extensive\nslave-purchases some of that spare cash you seem at a loss to spend\nsatisfactorily here.”\n“And what will you do, Janet, while I am bargaining for so many tons of\nflesh and such an assortment of black eyes?”\n“I’ll be preparing myself to go out as a missionary to preach liberty\nto them that are enslaved—your harem inmates amongst the rest. I’ll get\nadmitted there, and I’ll stir up mutiny; and you, three-tailed bashaw\nas you are, sir, shall in a trice find yourself fettered amongst our\nhands: nor will I, for one, consent to cut your bonds till you have\nsigned a charter, the most liberal that despot ever yet conferred.”\n“I would consent to be at your mercy, Jane.”\n“I would have no mercy, Mr. Rochester, if you supplicated for it with\nan eye like that. While you looked so, I should be certain that\nwhatever charter you might grant under coercion, your first act, when\nreleased, would be to violate its conditions.”\n“Why, Jane, what would you have? I fear you will compel me to go\nthrough a private marriage ceremony, besides that performed at the\naltar. You will stipulate, I see, for peculiar terms—what will they\nbe?”\n“I only want an easy mind, sir; not crushed by crowded obligations. Do\nyou remember what you said of Céline Varens?—of the diamonds, the\ncashmeres you gave her? I will not be your English Céline Varens. I\nshall continue to act as Adèle’s governess; by that I shall earn my\nboard and lodging, and thirty pounds a year besides. I’ll furnish my\nown wardrobe out of that money, and you shall give me nothing but—”\n“Well, but what?”\n“Your regard; and if I give you mine in return, that debt will be\nquit.”\n“Well, for cool native impudence and pure innate pride, you haven’t\nyour equal,” said he. We were now approaching Thornfield. “Will it\nplease you to dine with me to-day?” he asked, as we re-entered the\ngates.\n“No, thank you, sir.”\n“And what for, ‘no, thank you?’ if one may inquire.”\n“I never have dined with you, sir: and I see no reason why I should\nnow: till—”\n“Till what? You delight in half-phrases.”\n“Till I can’t help it.”\n“Do you suppose I eat like an ogre or a ghoul, that you dread being the\ncompanion of my repast?”\n“I have formed no supposition on the subject, sir; but I want to go on\nas usual for another month.”\n“You will give up your governessing slavery at once.”\n“Indeed, begging your pardon, sir, I shall not. I shall just go on with\nit as usual. I shall keep out of your way all day, as I have been\naccustomed to do: you may send for me in the evening, when you feel\ndisposed to see me, and I’ll come then; but at no other time.”\n“I want a smoke, Jane, or a pinch of snuff, to comfort me under all\nthis, ‘pour me donner une contenance,’ as Adèle would say; and\nunfortunately I have neither my cigar-case, nor my snuff-box. But\nlisten—whisper. It is your time now, little tyrant, but it will be mine\npresently; and when once I have fairly seized you, to have and to hold,\nI’ll just—figuratively speaking—attach you to a chain like this”\n(touching his watch-guard). “Yes, bonny wee thing, I’ll wear you in my\nbosom, lest my jewel I should tyne.”\nHe said this as he helped me to alight from the carriage, and while he\nafterwards lifted out Adèle, I entered the house, and made good my\nretreat upstairs.\nHe duly summoned me to his presence in the evening. I had prepared an\noccupation for him; for I was determined not to spend the whole time in\na _tête-à-tête_ conversation. I remembered his fine voice; I knew he\nliked to sing—good singers generally do. I was no vocalist myself, and,\nin his fastidious judgment, no musician, either; but I delighted in\nlistening when the performance was good. No sooner had twilight, that\nhour of romance, began to lower her blue and starry banner over the\nlattice, than I rose, opened the piano, and entreated him, for the love\nof heaven, to give me a song. He said I was a capricious witch, and\nthat he would rather sing another time; but I averred that no time was\nlike the present.\n“Did I like his voice?” he asked.\n“Very much.” I was not fond of pampering that susceptible vanity of\nhis; but for once, and from motives of expediency, I would e’en soothe\nand stimulate it.\n“Then, Jane, you must play the accompaniment.”\n“Very well, sir, I will try.”\nI did try, but was presently swept off the stool and denominated “a\nlittle bungler.” Being pushed unceremoniously to one side—which was\nprecisely what I wished—he usurped my place, and proceeded to accompany\nhimself: for he could play as well as sing. I hied me to the\nwindow-recess. And while I sat there and looked out on the still trees\nand dim lawn, to a sweet air was sung in mellow tones the following\nstrain:—\n“The truest love that ever heart\nFelt at its kindled core,\nDid through each vein, in quickened start,\nThe tide of being pour.\nHer coming was my hope each day,\nHer parting was my pain;\nThe chance that did her steps delay\nWas ice in every vein.\nI dreamed it would be nameless bliss,\nAs I loved, loved to be;\nAnd to this object did I press\nAs blind as eagerly.\nBut wide as pathless was the space\nThat lay our lives between,\nAnd dangerous as the foamy race\nOf ocean-surges green.\nAnd haunted as a robber-path\nThrough wilderness or wood;\nFor Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath,\nBetween our spirits stood.\nI dangers dared; I hindrance scorned;\nI omens did defy:\nWhatever menaced, harassed, warned,\nI passed impetuous by.\nOn sped my rainbow, fast as light;\nI flew as in a dream;\nFor glorious rose upon my sight\nThat child of Shower and Gleam.\nStill bright on clouds of suffering dim\nShines that soft, solemn joy;\nNor care I now, how dense and grim\nDisasters gather nigh.\nI care not in this moment sweet,\nThough all I have rushed o’er\nShould come on pinion, strong and fleet,\nProclaiming vengeance sore:\nThough haughty Hate should strike me down,\nRight, bar approach to me,\nAnd grinding Might, with furious frown,\nSwear endless enmity.\nMy love has placed her little hand\nWith noble faith in mine,\nAnd vowed that wedlock’s sacred band\nOur nature shall entwine.\nMy love has sworn, with sealing kiss,\nWith me to live—to die;\nI have at last my nameless bliss.\nAs I love—loved am I!”\nHe rose and came towards me, and I saw his face all kindled, and his\nfull falcon-eye flashing, and tenderness and passion in every\nlineament. I quailed momentarily—then I rallied. Soft scene, daring\ndemonstration, I would not have; and I stood in peril of both: a weapon\nof defence must be prepared—I whetted my tongue: as he reached me, I\nasked with asperity, “whom he was going to marry now?”\n“That was a strange question to be put by his darling Jane.”\n“Indeed! I considered it a very natural and necessary one: he had\ntalked of his future wife dying with him. What did he mean by such a\npagan idea? _I_ had no intention of dying with him—he might depend on\nthat.”\n“Oh, all he longed, all he prayed for, was that I might live with him!\nDeath was not for such as I.”\n“Indeed it was: I had as good a right to die when my time came as he\nhad: but I should bide that time, and not be hurried away in a suttee.”\n“Would I forgive him for the selfish idea, and prove my pardon by a\nreconciling kiss?”\n“No: I would rather be excused.”\nHere I heard myself apostrophised as a “hard little thing;” and it was\nadded, “any other woman would have been melted to marrow at hearing\nsuch stanzas crooned in her praise.”\nI assured him I was naturally hard—very flinty, and that he would often\nfind me so; and that, moreover, I was determined to show him divers\nrugged points in my character before the ensuing four weeks elapsed: he\nshould know fully what sort of a bargain he had made, while there was\nyet time to rescind it.\n“Would I be quiet and talk rationally?”\n“I would be quiet if he liked, and as to talking rationally, I\nflattered myself I was doing that now.”\nHe fretted, pished, and pshawed. “Very good,” I thought; “you may fume\nand fidget as you please: but this is the best plan to pursue with you,\nI am certain. I like you more than I can say; but I’ll not sink into a\nbathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I’ll keep you\nfrom the edge of the gulf too; and, moreover, maintain by its pungent\naid that distance between you and myself most conducive to our real\nmutual advantage.”\nFrom less to more, I worked him up to considerable irritation; then,\nafter he had retired, in dudgeon, quite to the other end of the room, I\ngot up, and saying, “I wish you good-night, sir,” in my natural and\nwonted respectful manner, I slipped out by the side-door and got away.\nThe system thus entered on, I pursued during the whole season of\nprobation; and with the best success. He was kept, to be sure, rather\ncross and crusty; but on the whole I could see he was excellently\nentertained, and that a lamb-like submission and turtle-dove\nsensibility, while fostering his despotism more, would have pleased his\njudgment, satisfied his common-sense, and even suited his taste less.\nIn other people’s presence I was, as formerly, deferential and quiet;\nany other line of conduct being uncalled for: it was only in the\nevening conferences I thus thwarted and afflicted him. He continued to\nsend for me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I\nappeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as “love” and\n“darling” on his lips: the best words at my service were “provoking\npuppet,” “malicious elf,” “sprite,” “changeling,” &c. For caresses,\ntoo, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the\narm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was all\nright: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to\nanything more tender. Mrs. Fairfax, I saw, approved me: her anxiety on\nmy account vanished; therefore I was certain I did well. Meantime, Mr.\nRochester affirmed I was wearing him to skin and bone, and threatened\nawful vengeance for my present conduct at some period fast coming. I\nlaughed in my sleeve at his menaces. “I can keep you in reasonable\ncheck now,” I reflected; “and I don’t doubt to be able to do it\nhereafter: if one expedient loses its virtue, another must be devised.”\nYet after all my task was not an easy one; often I would rather have\npleased than teased him. My future husband was becoming to me my whole\nworld; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood\nbetween me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes\nbetween man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for\nHis creature: of whom I had made an idol.\n', 'The month of courtship had wasted: its very last hours were being\nnumbered. There was no putting off the day that advanced—the bridal\nday; and all preparations for its arrival were complete. _I_, at least,\nhad nothing more to do: there were my trunks, packed, locked, corded,\nranged in a row along the wall of my little chamber; to-morrow, at this\ntime, they would be far on their road to London: and so should I\n(D.V.),—or rather, not I, but one Jane Rochester, a person whom as yet\nI knew not. The cards of address alone remained to nail on: they lay,\nfour little squares, in the drawer. Mr. Rochester had himself written\nthe direction, “Mrs. Rochester, —— Hotel, London,” on each: I could not\npersuade myself to affix them, or to have them affixed. Mrs. Rochester!\nShe did not exist: she would not be born till to-morrow, some time\nafter eight o’clock A.M.; and I would wait to be assured she had come\ninto the world alive before I assigned to her all that property. It was\nenough that in yonder closet, opposite my dressing-table, garments said\nto be hers had already displaced my black stuff Lowood frock and straw\nbonnet: for not to me appertained that suit of wedding raiment; the\npearl-coloured robe, the vapoury veil pendent from the usurped\nportmanteau. I shut the closet to conceal the strange, wraith-like\napparel it contained; which, at this evening hour—nine o’clock—gave out\ncertainly a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow of my apartment. “I\nwill leave you by yourself, white dream,” I said. “I am feverish: I\nhear the wind blowing: I will go out of doors and feel it.”\nIt was not only the hurry of preparation that made me feverish; not\nonly the anticipation of the great change—the new life which was to\ncommence to-morrow: both these circumstances had their share,\ndoubtless, in producing that restless, excited mood which hurried me\nforth at this late hour into the darkening grounds: but a third cause\ninfluenced my mind more than they.\nI had at heart a strange and anxious thought. Something had happened\nwhich I could not comprehend; no one knew of or had seen the event but\nmyself: it had taken place the preceding night. Mr. Rochester that\nnight was absent from home; nor was he yet returned: business had\ncalled him to a small estate of two or three farms he possessed thirty\nmiles off—business it was requisite he should settle in person,\nprevious to his meditated departure from England. I waited now his\nreturn; eager to disburthen my mind, and to seek of him the solution of\nthe enigma that perplexed me. Stay till he comes, reader; and, when I\ndisclose my secret to him, you shall share the confidence.\nI sought the orchard, driven to its shelter by the wind, which all day\nhad blown strong and full from the south, without, however, bringing a\nspeck of rain. Instead of subsiding as night drew on, it seemed to\naugment its rush and deepen its roar: the trees blew steadfastly one\nway, never writhing round, and scarcely tossing back their boughs once\nin an hour; so continuous was the strain bending their branchy heads\nnorthward—the clouds drifted from pole to pole, fast following, mass on\nmass: no glimpse of blue sky had been visible that July day.\nIt was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind,\ndelivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering\nthrough space. Descending the laurel walk, I faced the wreck of the\nchestnut-tree; it stood up black and riven: the trunk, split down the\ncentre, gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken from each\nother, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below;\nthough community of vitality was destroyed—the sap could flow no more:\ntheir great boughs on each side were dead, and next winter’s tempests\nwould be sure to fell one or both to earth: as yet, however, they might\nbe said to form one tree—a ruin, but an entire ruin.\n“You did right to hold fast to each other,” I said: as if the\nmonster-splinters were living things, and could hear me. “I think,\nscathed as you look, and charred and scorched, there must be a little\nsense of life in you yet, rising out of that adhesion at the faithful,\nhonest roots: you will never have green leaves more—never more see\nbirds making nests and singing idyls in your boughs; the time of\npleasure and love is over with you: but you are not desolate: each of\nyou has a comrade to sympathise with him in his decay.” As I looked up\nat them, the moon appeared momentarily in that part of the sky which\nfilled their fissure; her disk was blood-red and half overcast; she\nseemed to throw on me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself\nagain instantly in the deep drift of cloud. The wind fell, for a\nsecond, round Thornfield; but far away over wood and water, poured a\nwild, melancholy wail: it was sad to listen to, and I ran off again.\nHere and there I strayed through the orchard, gathered up the apples\nwith which the grass round the tree roots was thickly strewn; then I\nemployed myself in dividing the ripe from the unripe; I carried them\ninto the house and put them away in the store-room. Then I repaired to\nthe library to ascertain whether the fire was lit, for, though summer,\nI knew on such a gloomy evening Mr. Rochester would like to see a\ncheerful hearth when he came in: yes, the fire had been kindled some\ntime, and burnt well. I placed his arm-chair by the chimney-corner: I\nwheeled the table near it: I let down the curtain, and had the candles\nbrought in ready for lighting. More restless than ever, when I had\ncompleted these arrangements I could not sit still, nor even remain in\nthe house: a little time-piece in the room and the old clock in the\nhall simultaneously struck ten.\n“How late it grows!” I said. “I will run down to the gates: it is\nmoonlight at intervals; I can see a good way on the road. He may be\ncoming now, and to meet him will save some minutes of suspense.”\nThe wind roared high in the great trees which embowered the gates; but\nthe road as far as I could see, to the right hand and the left, was all\nstill and solitary: save for the shadows of clouds crossing it at\nintervals as the moon looked out, it was but a long pale line, unvaried\nby one moving speck.\nA puerile tear dimmed my eye while I looked—a tear of disappointment\nand impatience; ashamed of it, I wiped it away. I lingered; the moon\nshut herself wholly within her chamber, and drew close her curtain of\ndense cloud: the night grew dark; rain came driving fast on the gale.\n“I wish he would come! I wish he would come!” I exclaimed, seized with\nhypochondriac foreboding. I had expected his arrival before tea; now it\nwas dark: what could keep him? Had an accident happened? The event of\nlast night again recurred to me. I interpreted it as a warning of\ndisaster. I feared my hopes were too bright to be realised; and I had\nenjoyed so much bliss lately that I imagined my fortune had passed its\nmeridian, and must now decline.\n“Well, I cannot return to the house,” I thought; “I cannot sit by the\nfireside, while he is abroad in inclement weather: better tire my limbs\nthan strain my heart; I will go forward and meet him.”\nI set out; I walked fast, but not far: ere I had measured a quarter of\na mile, I heard the tramp of hoofs; a horseman came on, full gallop; a\ndog ran by his side. Away with evil presentiment! It was he: here he\nwas, mounted on Mesrour, followed by Pilot. He saw me; for the moon had\nopened a blue field in the sky, and rode in it watery bright: he took\nhis hat off, and waved it round his head. I now ran to meet him.\n“There!” he exclaimed, as he stretched out his hand and bent from the\nsaddle: “You can’t do without me, that is evident. Step on my boot-toe;\ngive me both hands: mount!”\nI obeyed: joy made me agile: I sprang up before him. A hearty kissing I\ngot for a welcome, and some boastful triumph, which I swallowed as well\nas I could. He checked himself in his exultation to demand, “But is\nthere anything the matter, Janet, that you come to meet me at such an\nhour? Is there anything wrong?”\n“No, but I thought you would never come. I could not bear to wait in\nthe house for you, especially with this rain and wind.”\n“Rain and wind, indeed! Yes, you are dripping like a mermaid; pull my\ncloak round you: but I think you are feverish, Jane: both your cheek\nand hand are burning hot. I ask again, is there anything the matter?”\n“Nothing now; I am neither afraid nor unhappy.”\n“Then you have been both?”\n“Rather: but I’ll tell you all about it by-and-by, sir; and I daresay\nyou will only laugh at me for my pains.”\n“I’ll laugh at you heartily when to-morrow is past; till then I dare\nnot: my prize is not certain. This is you, who have been as slippery as\nan eel this last month, and as thorny as a briar-rose? I could not lay\na finger anywhere but I was pricked; and now I seem to have gathered up\na stray lamb in my arms. You wandered out of the fold to seek your\nshepherd, did you, Jane?”\n“I wanted you: but don’t boast. Here we are at Thornfield: now let me\nget down.”\nHe landed me on the pavement. As John took his horse, and he followed\nme into the hall, he told me to make haste and put something dry on,\nand then return to him in the library; and he stopped me, as I made for\nthe staircase, to extort a promise that I would not be long: nor was I\nlong; in five minutes I rejoined him. I found him at supper.\n“Take a seat and bear me company, Jane: please God, it is the last meal\nbut one you will eat at Thornfield Hall for a long time.”\nI sat down near him, but told him I could not eat.\n“Is it because you have the prospect of a journey before you, Jane? Is\nit the thoughts of going to London that takes away your appetite?”\n“I cannot see my prospects clearly to-night, sir; and I hardly know\nwhat thoughts I have in my head. Everything in life seems unreal.”\n“Except me: I am substantial enough—touch me.”\n“You, sir, are the most phantom-like of all: you are a mere dream.”\nHe held out his hand, laughing. “Is that a dream?” said he, placing it\nclose to my eyes. He had a rounded, muscular, and vigorous hand, as\nwell as a long, strong arm.\n“Yes; though I touch it, it is a dream,” said I, as I put it down from\nbefore my face. “Sir, have you finished supper?”\n“Yes, Jane.”\nI rang the bell and ordered away the tray. When we were again alone, I\nstirred the fire, and then took a low seat at my master’s knee.\n“It is near midnight,” I said.\n“Yes: but remember, Jane, you promised to wake with me the night before\nmy wedding.”\n“I did; and I will keep my promise, for an hour or two at least: I have\nno wish to go to bed.”\n“Are all your arrangements complete?”\n“All, sir.”\n“And on my part likewise,” he returned, “I have settled everything; and\nwe shall leave Thornfield to-morrow, within half-an-hour after our\nreturn from church.”\n“Very well, sir.”\n“With what an extraordinary smile you uttered that word—‘very well,’\nJane! What a bright spot of colour you have on each cheek! and how\nstrangely your eyes glitter! Are you well?”\n“I believe I am.”\n“Believe! What is the matter? Tell me what you feel.”\n“I could not, sir: no words could tell you what I feel. I wish this\npresent hour would never end: who knows with what fate the next may\ncome charged?”\n“This is hypochondria, Jane. You have been over-excited, or\nover-fatigued.”\n“Do you, sir, feel calm and happy?”\n“Calm?—no: but happy—to the heart’s core.”\nI looked up at him to read the signs of bliss in his face: it was\nardent and flushed.\n“Give me your confidence, Jane,” he said: “relieve your mind of any\nweight that oppresses it, by imparting it to me. What do you fear?—that\nI shall not prove a good husband?”\n“It is the idea farthest from my thoughts.”\n“Are you apprehensive of the new sphere you are about to enter?—of the\nnew life into which you are passing?”\n“No.”\n“You puzzle me, Jane: your look and tone of sorrowful audacity perplex\nand pain me. I want an explanation.”\n“Then, sir, listen. You were from home last night?”\n“I was: I know that; and you hinted a while ago at something which had\nhappened in my absence:—nothing, probably, of consequence; but, in\nshort, it has disturbed you. Let me hear it. Mrs. Fairfax has said\nsomething, perhaps? or you have overheard the servants talk?—your\nsensitive self-respect has been wounded?”\n“No, sir.” It struck twelve—I waited till the time-piece had concluded\nits silver chime, and the clock its hoarse, vibrating stroke, and then\nI proceeded.\n“All day yesterday I was very busy, and very happy in my ceaseless\nbustle; for I am not, as you seem to think, troubled by any haunting\nfears about the new sphere, et cetera: I think it a glorious thing to\nhave the hope of living with you, because I love you. No, sir, don’t\ncaress me now—let me talk undisturbed. Yesterday I trusted well in\nProvidence, and believed that events were working together for your\ngood and mine: it was a fine day, if you recollect—the calmness of the\nair and sky forbade apprehensions respecting your safety or comfort on\nyour journey. I walked a little while on the pavement after tea,\nthinking of you; and I beheld you in imagination so near me, I scarcely\nmissed your actual presence. I thought of the life that lay before\nme—_your_ life, sir—an existence more expansive and stirring than my\nown: as much more so as the depths of the sea to which the brook runs\nare than the shallows of its own strait channel. I wondered why\nmoralists call this world a dreary wilderness: for me it blossomed like\na rose. Just at sunset, the air turned cold and the sky cloudy: I went\nin, Sophie called me upstairs to look at my wedding-dress, which they\nhad just brought; and under it in the box I found your present—the veil\nwhich, in your princely extravagance, you sent for from London:\nresolved, I suppose, since I would not have jewels, to cheat me into\naccepting something as costly. I smiled as I unfolded it, and devised\nhow I would tease you about your aristocratic tastes, and your efforts\nto masque your plebeian bride in the attributes of a peeress. I thought\nhow I would carry down to you the square of unembroidered blond I had\nmyself prepared as a covering for my low-born head, and ask if that was\nnot good enough for a woman who could bring her husband neither\nfortune, beauty, nor connections. I saw plainly how you would look; and\nheard your impetuous republican answers, and your haughty disavowal of\nany necessity on your part to augment your wealth, or elevate your\nstanding, by marrying either a purse or a coronet.”\n“How well you read me, you witch!” interposed Mr. Rochester: “but what\ndid you find in the veil besides its embroidery? Did you find poison,\nor a dagger, that you look so mournful now?”\n“No, no, sir; besides the delicacy and richness of the fabric, I found\nnothing save Fairfax Rochester’s pride; and that did not scare me,\nbecause I am used to the sight of the demon. But, sir, as it grew dark,\nthe wind rose: it blew yesterday evening, not as it blows now—wild and\nhigh—but ‘with a sullen, moaning sound’ far more eerie. I wished you\nwere at home. I came into this room, and the sight of the empty chair\nand fireless hearth chilled me. For some time after I went to bed, I\ncould not sleep—a sense of anxious excitement distressed me. The gale\nstill rising seemed to my ear to muffle a mournful under-sound;\nwhether in the house or abroad I could not at first tell, but it\nrecurred, doubtful yet doleful at every lull; at last I made out it\nmust be some dog howling at a distance. I was glad when it ceased. On\nsleeping, I continued in dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night. I\ncontinued also the wish to be with you, and experienced a strange,\nregretful consciousness of some barrier dividing us. During all my\nfirst sleep, I was following the windings of an unknown road; total\nobscurity environed me; rain pelted me; I was burdened with the charge\nof a little child: a very small creature, too young and feeble to walk,\nand which shivered in my cold arms, and wailed piteously in my ear. I\nthought, sir, that you were on the road a long way before me; and I\nstrained every nerve to overtake you, and made effort on effort to\nutter your name and entreat you to stop—but my movements were fettered,\nand my voice still died away inarticulate; while you, I felt, withdrew\nfarther and farther every moment.”\n“And these dreams weigh on your spirits now, Jane, when I am close to\nyou? Little nervous subject! Forget visionary woe, and think only of\nreal happiness! You say you love me, Janet: yes—I will not forget that;\nand you cannot deny it. _Those_ words did not die inarticulate on your\nlips. I heard them clear and soft: a thought too solemn perhaps, but\nsweet as music—‘I think it is a glorious thing to have the hope of\nliving with you, Edward, because I love you.’ Do you love me,\nJane?—repeat it.”\n“I do, sir—I do, with my whole heart.”\n“Well,” he said, after some minutes’ silence, “it is strange; but that\nsentence has penetrated my breast painfully. Why? I think because you\nsaid it with such an earnest, religious energy, and because your upward\ngaze at me now is the very sublime of faith, truth, and devotion: it is\ntoo much as if some spirit were near me. Look wicked, Jane: as you know\nwell how to look: coin one of your wild, shy, provoking smiles; tell me\nyou hate me—tease me, vex me; do anything but move me: I would rather\nbe incensed than saddened.”\n“I will tease you and vex you to your heart’s content, when I have\nfinished my tale: but hear me to the end.”\n“I thought, Jane, you had told me all. I thought I had found the source\nof your melancholy in a dream.”\nI shook my head. “What! is there more? But I will not believe it to be\nanything important. I warn you of incredulity beforehand. Go on.”\nThe disquietude of his air, the somewhat apprehensive impatience of his\nmanner, surprised me: but I proceeded.\n“I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin,\nthe retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the stately front\nnothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and very\nfragile-looking. I wandered, on a moonlight night, through the\ngrass-grown enclosure within: here I stumbled over a marble hearth, and\nthere over a fallen fragment of cornice. Wrapped up in a shawl, I still\ncarried the unknown little child: I might not lay it down anywhere,\nhowever tired were my arms—however much its weight impeded my progress,\nI must retain it. I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the\nroad; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years and\nfor a distant country. I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous\nhaste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones\nrolled from under my feet, the ivy branches I grasped gave way, the\nchild clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me; at last I\ngained the summit. I saw you like a speck on a white track, lessening\nevery moment. The blast blew so strong I could not stand. I sat down on\nthe narrow ledge; I hushed the scared infant in my lap: you turned an\nangle of the road: I bent forward to take a last look; the wall\ncrumbled; I was shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my\nbalance, fell, and woke.”\n“Now, Jane, that is all.”\n“All the preface, sir; the tale is yet to come. On waking, a gleam\ndazzled my eyes; I thought—Oh, it is daylight! But I was mistaken; it\nwas only candlelight. Sophie, I supposed, had come in. There was a\nlight in the dressing-table, and the door of the closet, where, before\ngoing to bed, I had hung my wedding-dress and veil, stood open; I heard\na rustling there. I asked, ‘Sophie, what are you doing?’ No one\nanswered; but a form emerged from the closet; it took the light, held\nit aloft, and surveyed the garments pendent from the portmanteau.\n‘Sophie! Sophie!’ I again cried: and still it was silent. I had risen\nup in bed, I bent forward: first surprise, then bewilderment, came over\nme; and then my blood crept cold through my veins. Mr. Rochester, this\nwas not Sophie, it was not Leah, it was not Mrs. Fairfax: it was\nnot—no, I was sure of it, and am still—it was not even that strange\nwoman, Grace Poole.”\n“It must have been one of them,” interrupted my master.\n“No, sir, I solemnly assure you to the contrary. The shape standing\nbefore me had never crossed my eyes within the precincts of Thornfield\nHall before; the height, the contour were new to me.”\n“Describe it, Jane.”\n“It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair\nhanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was\nwhite and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell.”\n“Did you see her face?”\n“Not at first. But presently she took my veil from its place; she held\nit up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her own head, and\nturned to the mirror. At that moment I saw the reflection of the visage\nand features quite distinctly in the dark oblong glass.”\n“And how were they?”\n“Fearful and ghastly to me—oh, sir, I never saw a face like it! It was\na discoloured face—it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll\nof the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments!”\n“Ghosts are usually pale, Jane.”\n“This, sir, was purple: the lips were swelled and dark; the brow\nfurrowed: the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes.\nShall I tell you of what it reminded me?”\n“You may.”\n“Of the foul German spectre—the Vampyre.”\n“Ah!—what did it do?”\n“Sir, it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and\nflinging both on the floor, trampled on them.”\nIt removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and\nflinging both on the floor, trampled on them\n“Afterwards?”\n“It drew aside the window-curtain and looked out; perhaps it saw dawn\napproaching, for, taking the candle, it retreated to the door. Just at\nmy bedside, the figure stopped: the fiery eyes glared upon me—she\nthrust up her candle close to my face, and extinguished it under my\neyes. I was aware her lurid visage flamed over mine, and I lost\nconsciousness: for the second time in my life—only the second time—I\nbecame insensible from terror.”\n“Who was with you when you revived?”\n“No one, sir, but the broad day. I rose, bathed my head and face in\nwater, drank a long draught; felt that though enfeebled I was not ill,\nand determined that to none but you would I impart this vision. Now,\nsir, tell me who and what that woman was?”\n“The creature of an over-stimulated brain; that is certain. I must be\ncareful of you, my treasure: nerves like yours were not made for rough\nhandling.”\n“Sir, depend on it, my nerves were not in fault; the thing was real:\nthe transaction actually took place.”\n“And your previous dreams, were they real too? Is Thornfield Hall a\nruin? Am I severed from you by insuperable obstacles? Am I leaving you\nwithout a tear—without a kiss—without a word?”\n“Not yet.”\n“Am I about to do it? Why, the day is already commenced which is to\nbind us indissolubly; and when we are once united, there shall be no\nrecurrence of these mental terrors: I guarantee that.”\n“Mental terrors, sir! I wish I could believe them to be only such: I\nwish it more now than ever; since even you cannot explain to me the\nmystery of that awful visitant.”\n“And since I cannot do it, Jane, it must have been unreal.”\n“But, sir, when I said so to myself on rising this morning, and when I\nlooked round the room to gather courage and comfort from the cheerful\naspect of each familiar object in full daylight, there—on the carpet—I\nsaw what gave the distinct lie to my hypothesis,—the veil, torn from\ntop to bottom in two halves!”\nI felt Mr. Rochester start and shudder; he hastily flung his arms round\nme. “Thank God!” he exclaimed, “that if anything malignant did come\nnear you last night, it was only the veil that was harmed. Oh, to think\nwhat might have happened!”\nHe drew his breath short, and strained me so close to him, I could\nscarcely pant. After some minutes’ silence, he continued, cheerily—\n“Now, Janet, I’ll explain to you all about it. It was half dream, half\nreality. A woman did, I doubt not, enter your room: and that woman\nwas—must have been—Grace Poole. You call her a strange being yourself:\nfrom all you know, you have reason so to call her—what did she do to\nme? what to Mason? In a state between sleeping and waking, you noticed\nher entrance and her actions; but feverish, almost delirious as you\nwere, you ascribed to her a goblin appearance different from her own:\nthe long dishevelled hair, the swelled black face, the exaggerated\nstature, were figments of imagination; results of nightmare: the\nspiteful tearing of the veil was real: and it is like her. I see you\nwould ask why I keep such a woman in my house: when we have been\nmarried a year and a day, I will tell you; but not now. Are you\nsatisfied, Jane? Do you accept my solution of the mystery?”\nI reflected, and in truth it appeared to me the only possible one:\nsatisfied I was not, but to please him I endeavoured to appear\nso—relieved, I certainly did feel; so I answered him with a contented\nsmile. And now, as it was long past one, I prepared to leave him.\n“Does not Sophie sleep with Adèle in the nursery?” he asked, as I lit\nmy candle.\n“Yes, sir.”\n“And there is room enough in Adèle’s little bed for you. You must share\nit with her to-night, Jane: it is no wonder that the incident you have\nrelated should make you nervous, and I would rather you did not sleep\nalone: promise me to go to the nursery.”\n“I shall be very glad to do so, sir.”\n“And fasten the door securely on the inside. Wake Sophie when you go\nupstairs, under pretence of requesting her to rouse you in good time\nto-morrow; for you must be dressed and have finished breakfast before\neight. And now, no more sombre thoughts: chase dull care away, Janet.\nDon’t you hear to what soft whispers the wind has fallen? and there is\nno more beating of rain against the window-panes: look here” (he lifted\nup the curtain)—“it is a lovely night!”\nIt was. Half heaven was pure and stainless: the clouds, now trooping\nbefore the wind, which had shifted to the west, were filing off\neastward in long, silvered columns. The moon shone peacefully.\n“Well,” said Mr. Rochester, gazing inquiringly into my eyes, “how is my\nJanet now?”\n“The night is serene, sir; and so am I.”\n“And you will not dream of separation and sorrow to-night; but of happy\nlove and blissful union.”\nThis prediction was but half fulfilled: I did not indeed dream of\nsorrow, but as little did I dream of joy; for I never slept at all.\nWith little Adèle in my arms, I watched the slumber of childhood—so\ntranquil, so passionless, so innocent—and waited for the coming day:\nall my life was awake and astir in my frame: and as soon as the sun\nrose I rose too. I remember Adèle clung to me as I left her: I remember\nI kissed her as I loosened her little hands from my neck; and I cried\nover her with strange emotion, and quitted her because I feared my sobs\nwould break her still sound repose. She seemed the emblem of my past\nlife; and he, I was now to array myself to meet, the dread, but adored,\ntype of my unknown future day.\n', 'Sophie came at seven to dress me: she was very long indeed in\naccomplishing her task; so long that Mr. Rochester, grown, I suppose,\nimpatient of my delay, sent up to ask why I did not come. She was just\nfastening my veil (the plain square of blond after all) to my hair with\na brooch; I hurried from under her hands as soon as I could.\n“Stop!” she cried in French. “Look at yourself in the mirror: you have\nnot taken one peep.”\nSo I turned at the door: I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike my\nusual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger. “Jane!”\ncalled a voice, and I hastened down. I was received at the foot of the\nstairs by Mr. Rochester.\n“Lingerer!” he said, “my brain is on fire with impatience, and you\ntarry so long!”\nHe took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over,\npronounced me “fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, but\nthe desire of his eyes,” and then telling me he would give me but ten\nminutes to eat some breakfast, he rang the bell. One of his lately\nhired servants, a footman, answered it.\n“Is John getting the carriage ready?”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“Is the luggage brought down?”\n“They are bringing it down, sir.”\n“Go you to the church: see if Mr. Wood (the clergyman) and the clerk\nare there: return and tell me.”\nThe church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates; the\nfootman soon returned.\n“Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice.”\n“And the carriage?”\n“The horses are harnessing.”\n“We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the moment\nwe return: all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped on, and the\ncoachman in his seat.”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“Jane, are you ready?”\nI rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait\nfor or marshal: none but Mr. Rochester and I. Mrs. Fairfax stood in the\nhall as we passed. I would fain have spoken to her, but my hand was\nheld by a grasp of iron: I was hurried along by a stride I could hardly\nfollow; and to look at Mr. Rochester’s face was to feel that not a\nsecond of delay would be tolerated for any purpose. I wonder what other\nbridegroom ever looked as he did—so bent up to a purpose, so grimly\nresolute: or who, under such steadfast brows, ever revealed such\nflaming and flashing eyes.\nI know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the drive, I\ngazed neither on sky nor earth: my heart was with my eyes; and both\nseemed migrated into Mr. Rochester’s frame. I wanted to see the\ninvisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to fasten a\nglance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts whose force he\nseemed breasting and resisting.\nAt the churchyard wicket he stopped: he discovered I was quite out of\nbreath. “Am I cruel in my love?” he said. “Delay an instant: lean on\nme, Jane.”\nAnd now I can recall the picture of the grey old house of God rising\ncalm before me, of a rook wheeling round the steeple, of a ruddy\nmorning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green\ngrave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of\nstrangers straying amongst the low hillocks and reading the mementoes\ngraven on the few mossy head-stones. I noticed them, because, as they\nsaw us, they passed round to the back of the church; and I doubted not\nthey were going to enter by the side-aisle door and witness the\nceremony. By Mr. Rochester they were not observed; he was earnestly\nlooking at my face, from which the blood had, I daresay, momentarily\nfled: for I felt my forehead dewy, and my cheeks and lips cold. When I\nrallied, which I soon did, he walked gently with me up the path to the\nporch.\nWe entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his white\nsurplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him. All was still: two\nshadows only moved in a remote corner. My conjecture had been correct:\nthe strangers had slipped in before us, and they now stood by the vault\nof the Rochesters, their backs towards us, viewing through the rails\nthe old time-stained marble tomb, where a kneeling angel guarded the\nremains of Damer de Rochester, slain at Marston Moor in the time of the\ncivil wars, and of Elizabeth, his wife.\nOur place was taken at the communion rails. Hearing a cautious step\nbehind me, I glanced over my shoulder: one of the strangers—a\ngentleman, evidently—was advancing up the chancel. The service began.\nThe explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through; and then\nthe clergyman came a step further forward, and, bending slightly\ntowards Mr. Rochester, went on.\n“I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day\nof judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed), that\nif either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined\ntogether in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured\nthat so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth\nallow, are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony\nlawful.”\nHe paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence ever\nbroken by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years. And the\nclergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had held his\nbreath but for a moment, was proceeding: his hand was already stretched\ntowards Mr. Rochester, as his lips unclosed to ask, “Wilt thou have\nthis woman for thy wedded wife?”—when a distinct and near voice said—\n“The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment.”\nThe clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute; the clerk did\nthe same; Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled\nunder his feet: taking a firmer footing, and not turning his head or\neyes, he said, “Proceed.”\nProfound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep but low\nintonation. Presently Mr. Wood said—\n“I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been\nasserted, and evidence of its truth or falsehood.”\n“The ceremony is quite broken off,” subjoined the voice behind us. “I\nam in a condition to prove my allegation: an insuperable impediment to\nthis marriage exists.”\nMr. Rochester heard, but heeded not: he stood stubborn and rigid,\nmaking no movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a hot and\nstrong grasp he had! and how like quarried marble was his pale, firm,\nmassive front at this moment! How his eye shone, still watchful, and\nyet wild beneath!\nMr. Wood seemed at a loss. “What is the nature of the impediment?” he\nasked. “Perhaps it may be got over—explained away?”\n“Hardly,” was the answer. “I have called it insuperable, and I speak\nadvisedly.”\nThe speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued,\nuttering each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly—\n“It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr.\nRochester has a wife now living.”\nMy nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated\nto thunder—my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt\nfrost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of swooning. I\nlooked at Mr. Rochester: I made him look at me. His whole face was\ncolourless rock: his eye was both spark and flint. He disavowed\nnothing: he seemed as if he would defy all things. Without speaking,\nwithout smiling, without seeming to recognise in me a human being, he\nonly twined my waist with his arm and riveted me to his side.\n“Who are you?” he asked of the intruder.\n“My name is Briggs, a solicitor of —— Street, London.”\n“And you would thrust on me a wife?”\n“I would remind you of your lady’s existence, sir, which the law\nrecognises, if you do not.”\n“Favour me with an account of her—with her name, her parentage, her\nplace of abode.”\n“Certainly.” Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and read\nout in a sort of official, nasal voice:—\n“‘I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October A.D. —— (a date of\nfifteen years back), Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield Hall, in\nthe county of ——, and of Ferndean Manor, in ——shire, England, was\nmarried to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of Jonas Mason,\nmerchant, and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at —— church, Spanish\nTown, Jamaica. The record of the marriage will be found in the register\nof that church—a copy of it is now in my possession. Signed, Richard\nMason.’”\n“That—if a genuine document—may prove I have been married, but it does\nnot prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still living.”\n“She was living three months ago,” returned the lawyer.\n“How do you know?”\n“I have a witness to the fact, whose testimony even you, sir, will\nscarcely controvert.”\n“Produce him—or go to hell.”\n“I will produce him first—he is on the spot. Mr. Mason, have the\ngoodness to step forward.”\nMr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth; he experienced, too,\na sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the\nspasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame. The second\nstranger, who had hitherto lingered in the background, now drew near; a\npale face looked over the solicitor’s shoulder—yes, it was Mason\nhimself. Mr. Rochester turned and glared at him. His eye, as I have\noften said, was a black eye: it had now a tawny, nay, a bloody light in\nits gloom; and his face flushed—olive cheek and hueless forehead\nreceived a glow as from spreading, ascending heart-fire: and he\nstirred, lifted his strong arm—he could have struck Mason, dashed him\non the church-floor, shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his\nbody—but Mason shrank away, and cried faintly, “Good God!” Contempt\nfell cool on Mr. Rochester—his passion died as if a blight had\nshrivelled it up: he only asked—“What have _you_ to say?”\nAn inaudible reply escaped Mason’s white lips.\n“The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again demand,\nwhat have _you_ to say?”\n“Sir—sir,” interrupted the clergyman, “do not forget you are in a\nsacred place.” Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, “Are you\naware, sir, whether or not this gentleman’s wife is still living?”\n“Courage,” urged the lawyer,—“speak out.”\n“She is now living at Thornfield Hall,” said Mason, in more articulate\ntones: “I saw her there last April. I am her brother.”\n“At Thornfield Hall!” ejaculated the clergyman. “Impossible! I am an\nold resident in this neighbourhood, sir, and I never heard of a Mrs.\nRochester at Thornfield Hall.”\nI saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester’s lips, and he muttered—\n“No, by God! I took care that none should hear of it—or of her under\nthat name.” He mused—for ten minutes he held counsel with himself: he\nformed his resolve, and announced it—\n“Enough! all shall bolt out at once, like the bullet from the barrel.\nWood, close your book and take off your surplice; John Green (to the\nclerk), leave the church: there will be no wedding to-day.” The man\nobeyed.\nMr. Rochester continued, hardily and recklessly: “Bigamy is an ugly\nword!—I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-manoeuvred\nme, or Providence has checked me,—perhaps the last. I am little better\nthan a devil at this moment; and, as my pastor there would tell me,\ndeserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, even to the quenchless\nfire and deathless worm. Gentlemen, my plan is broken up:—what this\nlawyer and his client say is true: I have been married, and the woman\nto whom I was married lives! You say you never heard of a Mrs.\nRochester at the house up yonder, Wood; but I daresay you have many a\ntime inclined your ear to gossip about the mysterious lunatic kept\nthere under watch and ward. Some have whispered to you that she is my\nbastard half-sister: some, my cast-off mistress. I now inform you that\nshe is my wife, whom I married fifteen years ago,—Bertha Mason by name;\nsister of this resolute personage, who is now, with his quivering limbs\nand white cheeks, showing you what a stout heart men may bear. Cheer\nup, Dick!—never fear me!—I’d almost as soon strike a woman as you.\nBertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs\nthrough three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman\nand a drunkard!—as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they\nwere silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child,\ncopied her parent in both points. I had a charming partner—pure, wise,\nmodest: you can fancy I was a happy man. I went through rich scenes!\nOh! my experience has been heavenly, if you only knew it! But I owe you\nno further explanation. Briggs, Wood, Mason, I invite you all to come\nup to the house and visit Mrs. Poole’s patient, and _my wife_! You\nshall see what sort of a being I was cheated into espousing, and judge\nwhether or not I had a right to break the compact, and seek sympathy\nwith something at least human. This girl,” he continued, looking at me,\n“knew no more than you, Wood, of the disgusting secret: she thought all\nwas fair and legal; and never dreamt she was going to be entrapped into\na feigned union with a defrauded wretch, already bound to a bad, mad,\nand embruted partner! Come all of you—follow!”\nStill holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen came\nafter. At the front door of the hall we found the carriage.\n“Take it back to the coach-house, John,” said Mr. Rochester coolly; “it\nwill not be wanted to-day.”\nAt our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Adèle, Sophie, Leah, advanced to meet\nand greet us.\n“To the right-about—every soul!” cried the master; “away with your\ncongratulations! Who wants them? Not I!—they are fifteen years too\nlate!”\nHe passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and still\nbeckoning the gentlemen to follow him, which they did. We mounted the\nfirst staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third storey:\nthe low, black door, opened by Mr. Rochester’s master-key, admitted us\nto the tapestried room, with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet.\n“You know this place, Mason,” said our guide; “she bit and stabbed you\nhere.”\nHe lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door: this,\ntoo, he opened. In a room without a window, there burnt a fire guarded\nby a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a\nchain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in\na saucepan. In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure\nran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being,\none could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all\nfours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it\nwas covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild\nas a mane, hid its head and face.\n“Good-morrow, Mrs. Poole!” said Mr. Rochester. “How are you? and how is\nyour charge to-day?”\n“We’re tolerable, sir, I thank you,” replied Grace, lifting the boiling\nmess carefully on to the hob: “rather snappish, but not ’rageous.”\nA fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report: the\nclothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet.\n“Ah! sir, she sees you!” exclaimed Grace: “you’d better not stay.”\n“Only a few moments, Grace: you must allow me a few moments.”\n“Take care then, sir!—for God’s sake, take care!”\nThe maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and\ngazed wildly at her visitors. I recognised well that purple face,—those\nbloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced.\n“Keep out of the way,” said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside: “she\nhas no knife now, I suppose, and I’m on my guard.”\n“One never knows what she has, sir: she is so cunning: it is not in\nmortal discretion to fathom her craft.”\n“We had better leave her,” whispered Mason.\n“Go to the devil!” was his brother-in-law’s recommendation.\n“’Ware!” cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr.\nRochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his\nthroat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled. She\nwas a big woman, in stature almost equalling her husband, and corpulent\nbesides: she showed virile force in the contest—more than once she\nalmost throttled him, athletic as he was. He could have settled her\nwith a well-planted blow; but he would not strike: he would only\nwrestle. At last he mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and\nhe pinioned them behind her: with more rope, which was at hand, he\nbound her to a chair. The operation was performed amidst the fiercest\nyells and the most convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to the\nspectators: he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate.\n“That is _my wife_,” said he. “Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am\never to know—such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure\nhours! And _this_ is what I wished to have” (laying his hand on my\nshoulder): “this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth\nof hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon, I wanted her\njust as a change after that fierce ragout. Wood and Briggs, look at the\ndifference! Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder—this\nface with that mask—this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of\nthe gospel and man of the law, and remember with what judgment ye judge\nye shall be judged! Off with you now. I must shut up my prize.”\nWe all withdrew. Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give some\nfurther order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as he\ndescended the stair.\n“You, madam,” said he, “are cleared from all blame: your uncle will be\nglad to hear it—if, indeed, he should be still living—when Mr. Mason\nreturns to Madeira.”\n“My uncle! What of him? Do you know him?”\n“Mr. Mason does. Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of his\nhouse for some years. When your uncle received your letter intimating\nthe contemplated union between yourself and Mr. Rochester, Mr. Mason,\nwho was staying at Madeira to recruit his health, on his way back to\nJamaica, happened to be with him. Mr. Eyre mentioned the intelligence;\nfor he knew that my client here was acquainted with a gentleman of the\nname of Rochester. Mr. Mason, astonished and distressed as you may\nsuppose, revealed the real state of matters. Your uncle, I am sorry to\nsay, is now on a sick bed; from which, considering the nature of his\ndisease—decline—and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will\never rise. He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate\nyou from the snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason\nto lose no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage. He\nreferred him to me for assistance. I used all despatch, and am thankful\nI was not too late: as you, doubtless, must be also. Were I not morally\ncertain that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira, I would\nadvise you to accompany Mr. Mason back; but as it is, I think you had\nbetter remain in England till you can hear further, either from or of\nMr. Eyre. Have we anything else to stay for?” he inquired of Mr. Mason.\n“No, no—let us be gone,” was the anxious reply; and without waiting to\ntake leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at the hall door. The\nclergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or\nreproof, with his haughty parishioner; this duty done, he too departed.\nI heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to\nwhich I had now withdrawn. The house cleared, I shut myself in,\nfastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded—not to weep,\nnot to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but—mechanically to take off\nthe wedding dress, and replace it by the stuff gown I had worn\nyesterday, as I thought, for the last time. I then sat down: I felt\nweak and tired. I leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped on\nthem. And now I thought: till now I had only heard, seen,\nmoved—followed up and down where I was led or dragged—watched event\nrush on event, disclosure open beyond disclosure: but _now_, _I\nthought_.\nThe morning had been a quiet morning enough—all except the brief scene\nwith the lunatic: the transaction in the church had not been noisy;\nthere was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no\ndefiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken,\na calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made; some stern, short\nquestions put by Mr. Rochester; answers, explanations given, evidence\nadduced; an open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master;\nthen the living proof had been seen; the intruders were gone, and all\nwas over.\nI was in my own room as usual—just myself, without obvious change:\nnothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And yet where was\nthe Jane Eyre of yesterday?—where was her life?—where were her\nprospects?\nJane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman—almost a bride, was\na cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were\ndesolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December\nstorm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed\nthe blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes\nwhich last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with\nuntrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and\nfragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and\nwhite as pine-forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead—struck\nwith a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born\nin the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so\nblooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could\nnever revive. I looked at my love: that feeling which was my\nmaster’s—which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a\nsuffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it;\nit could not seek Mr. Rochester’s arms—it could not derive warmth from\nhis breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was\nblighted—confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had\nbeen; for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice\nto him; I would not say he had betrayed me; but the attribute of\nstainless truth was gone from his idea, and from his presence I must\ngo: _that_ I perceived well. When—how—whither, I could not yet discern;\nbut he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real\naffection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful\npassion: that was balked; he would want me no more. I should fear even\nto cross his path now: my view must be hateful to him. Oh, how blind\nhad been my eyes! How weak my conduct!\nMy eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round\nme, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow.\nSelf-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down\nin the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in\nremote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to\nflee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead. One idea only\nstill throbbed life-like within me—a remembrance of God: it begot an\nunuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless\nmind, as something that should be whispered, but no energy was found to\nexpress them—\n“Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.”\nIt was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it—as I\nhad neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips—it\ncame: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole\nconsciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith\ndeath-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That\nbitter hour cannot be described: in truth, “the waters came into my\nsoul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters;\nthe floods overflowed me.”\n', 'Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and\nseeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I\nasked, “What am I to do?”\nBut the answer my mind gave—“Leave Thornfield at once”—was so prompt,\nso dread, that I stopped my ears. I said I could not bear such words\nnow. “That I am not Edward Rochester’s bride is the least part of my\nwoe,” I alleged: “that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and\nfound them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master; but\nthat I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I\ncannot do it.”\nBut, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold\nthat I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be\nweak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw\nlaid out for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the\nthroat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in\nthe slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her\ndown to unsounded depths of agony.\n“Let me be torn away, then” I cried. “Let another help me!”\n“No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall\nyourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand:\nyour heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it.”\nI rose up suddenly, terror-struck at the solitude which so ruthless a\njudge haunted,—at the silence which so awful a voice filled. My head\nswam as I stood erect. I perceived that I was sickening from excitement\nand inanition; neither meat nor drink had passed my lips that day, for\nI had taken no breakfast. And, with a strange pang, I now reflected\nthat, long as I had been shut up here, no message had been sent to ask\nhow I was, or to invite me to come down: not even little Adèle had\ntapped at the door; not even Mrs. Fairfax had sought me. “Friends\nalways forget those whom fortune forsakes,” I murmured, as I undrew the\nbolt and passed out. I stumbled over an obstacle: my head was still\ndizzy, my sight was dim, and my limbs were feeble. I could not soon\nrecover myself. I fell, but not on to the ground: an outstretched arm\ncaught me. I looked up—I was supported by Mr. Rochester, who sat in a\nchair across my chamber threshold.\n“You come out at last,” he said. “Well, I have been waiting for you\nlong, and listening: yet not one movement have I heard, nor one sob:\nfive minutes more of that death-like hush, and I should have forced the\nlock like a burglar. So you shun me?—you shut yourself up and grieve\nalone! I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence. You\nare passionate: I expected a scene of some kind. I was prepared for the\nhot rain of tears; only I wanted them to be shed on my breast: now a\nsenseless floor has received them, or your drenched handkerchief. But I\nerr: you have not wept at all! I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but\nno trace of tears. I suppose, then, your heart has been weeping blood?\n“Well, Jane! not a word of reproach? Nothing bitter—nothing poignant?\nNothing to cut a feeling or sting a passion? You sit quietly where I\nhave placed you, and regard me with a weary, passive look.\n“Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one\nlittle ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his\nbread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake\nslaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody\nblunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?”\nReader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot. There was such\ndeep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy\nin his manner; and besides, there was such unchanged love in his whole\nlook and mien—I forgave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only\nat my heart’s core.\n“You know I am a scoundrel, Jane?” ere long he inquired\nwistfully—wondering, I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness,\nthe result rather of weakness than of will.\n“Yes, sir.”\n“Then tell me so roundly and sharply—don’t spare me.”\n“I cannot: I am tired and sick. I want some water.” He heaved a sort of\nshuddering sigh, and taking me in his arms, carried me downstairs. At\nfirst I did not know to what room he had borne me; all was cloudy to my\nglazed sight: presently I felt the reviving warmth of a fire; for,\nsummer as it was, I had become icy cold in my chamber. He put wine to\nmy lips; I tasted it and revived; then I ate something he offered me,\nand was soon myself. I was in the library—sitting in his chair—he was\nquite near. “If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang,\nit would be well for me,” I thought; “then I should not have to make\nthe effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr.\nRochester’s. I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave him—I\ncannot leave him.”\n“How are you now, Jane?”\n“Much better, sir; I shall be well soon.”\n“Taste the wine again, Jane.”\nI obeyed him; then he put the glass on the table, stood before me, and\nlooked at me attentively. Suddenly he turned away, with an inarticulate\nexclamation, full of passionate emotion of some kind; he walked fast\nthrough the room and came back; he stooped towards me as if to kiss me;\nbut I remembered caresses were now forbidden. I turned my face away and\nput his aside.\n“What!—How is this?” he exclaimed hastily. “Oh, I know! you won’t kiss\nthe husband of Bertha Mason? You consider my arms filled and my\nembraces appropriated?”\n“At any rate, there is neither room nor claim for me, sir.”\n“Why, Jane? I will spare you the trouble of much talking; I will answer\nfor you—Because I have a wife already, you would reply.—I guess\nrightly?”\n“Yes.”\n“If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me; you must\nregard me as a plotting profligate—a base and low rake who has been\nsimulating disinterested love in order to draw you into a snare\ndeliberately laid, and strip you of honour and rob you of self-respect.\nWhat do you say to that? I see you can say nothing: in the first place,\nyou are faint still, and have enough to do to draw your breath; in the\nsecond place, you cannot yet accustom yourself to accuse and revile me,\nand besides, the flood-gates of tears are opened, and they would rush\nout if you spoke much; and you have no desire to expostulate, to\nupbraid, to make a scene: you are thinking how _to act_—_talking_ you\nconsider is of no use. I know you—I am on my guard.”\n“Sir, I do not wish to act against you,” I said; and my unsteady voice\nwarned me to curtail my sentence.\n“Not in _your_ sense of the word, but in _mine_ you are scheming to\ndestroy me. You have as good as said that I am a married man—as a\nmarried man you will shun me, keep out of my way: just now you have\nrefused to kiss me. You intend to make yourself a complete stranger to\nme: to live under this roof only as Adèle’s governess; if ever I say a\nfriendly word to you, if ever a friendly feeling inclines you again to\nme, you will say,—‘That man had nearly made me his mistress: I must be\nice and rock to him;’ and ice and rock you will accordingly become.”\nI cleared and steadied my voice to reply: “All is changed about me,\nsir; I must change too—there is no doubt of that; and to avoid\nfluctuations of feeling, and continual combats with recollections and\nassociations, there is only one way—Adèle must have a new governess,\nsir.”\n“Oh, Adèle will go to school—I have settled that already; nor do I mean\nto torment you with the hideous associations and recollections of\nThornfield Hall—this accursed place—this tent of Achan—this insolent\nvault, offering the ghastliness of living death to the light of the\nopen sky—this narrow stone hell, with its one real fiend, worse than a\nlegion of such as we imagine. Jane, you shall not stay here, nor will\nI. I was wrong ever to bring you to Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did\nhow it was haunted. I charged them to conceal from you, before I ever\nsaw you, all knowledge of the curse of the place; merely because I\nfeared Adèle never would have a governess to stay if she knew with what\ninmate she was housed, and my plans would not permit me to remove the\nmaniac elsewhere—though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even\nmore retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely\nenough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in\nthe heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement.\nProbably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but\nto each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect\nassassination, even of what I most hate.\n“Concealing the mad-woman’s neighbourhood from you, however, was\nsomething like covering a child with a cloak and laying it down near a\nupas-tree: that demon’s vicinage is poisoned, and always was. But I’ll\nshut up Thornfield Hall: I’ll nail up the front door and board the\nlower windows: I’ll give Mrs. Poole two hundred a year to live here\nwith _my wife_, as you term that fearful hag: Grace will do much for\nmoney, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby Retreat, to\nbear her company and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms, when\n_my wife_ is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at\nnight, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on—”\n“Sir,” I interrupted him, “you are inexorable for that unfortunate\nlady: you speak of her with hate—with vindictive antipathy. It is\ncruel—she cannot help being mad.”\n“Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you\ndon’t know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not\nbecause she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should\nhate you?”\n“I do indeed, sir.”\n“Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing\nabout the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh\nis as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be\ndear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my\ntreasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a\nstrait waistcoat—your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me:\nif you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should\nreceive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive.\nI should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your\nquiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I\ncould hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no\nsmile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they\nhad no longer a ray of recognition for me.—But why do I follow that\ntrain of ideas? I was talking of removing you from Thornfield. All, you\nknow, is prepared for prompt departure: to-morrow you shall go. I only\nask you to endure one more night under this roof, Jane; and then,\nfarewell to its miseries and terrors for ever! I have a place to repair\nto, which will be a secure sanctuary from hateful reminiscences, from\nunwelcome intrusion—even from falsehood and slander.”\n“And take Adèle with you, sir,” I interrupted; “she will be a companion\nfor you.”\n“What do you mean, Jane? I told you I would send Adèle to school; and\nwhat do I want with a child for a companion, and not my own child,—a\nFrench dancer’s bastard? Why do you importune me about her! I say, why\ndo you assign Adèle to me for a companion?”\n“You spoke of a retirement, sir; and retirement and solitude are dull:\ntoo dull for you.”\n“Solitude! solitude!” he reiterated with irritation. “I see I must come\nto an explanation. I don’t know what sphynx-like expression is forming\nin your countenance. _You_ are to share my solitude. Do you\nunderstand?”\nI shook my head: it required a degree of courage, excited as he was\nbecoming, even to risk that mute sign of dissent. He had been walking\nfast about the room, and he stopped, as if suddenly rooted to one spot.\nHe looked at me long and hard: I turned my eyes from him, fixed them on\nthe fire, and tried to assume and maintain a quiet, collected aspect.\n“Now for the hitch in Jane’s character,” he said at last, speaking more\ncalmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. “The reel of\nsilk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come\na knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation,\nand endless trouble! By God! I long to exert a fraction of Samson’s\nstrength, and break the entanglement like tow!”\nHe recommenced his walk, but soon again stopped, and this time just\nbefore me.\n“Jane! will you hear reason?” (he stooped and approached his lips to my\near); “because, if you won’t, I’ll try violence.” His voice was hoarse;\nhis look that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond\nand plunge headlong into wild license. I saw that in another moment,\nand with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be able to do nothing\nwith him. The present—the passing second of time—was all I had in which\nto control and restrain him: a movement of repulsion, flight, fear\nwould have sealed my doom,—and his. But I was not afraid: not in the\nleast. I felt an inward power; a sense of influence, which supported\nme. The crisis was perilous; but not without its charm: such as the\nIndian, perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I\ntook hold of his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers, and\nsaid to him, soothingly—\n“Sit down; I’ll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you have\nto say, whether reasonable or unreasonable.”\nHe sat down: but he did not get leave to speak directly. I had been\nstruggling with tears for some time: I had taken great pains to repress\nthem, because I knew he would not like to see me weep. Now, however, I\nconsidered it well to let them flow as freely and as long as they\nliked. If the flood annoyed him, so much the better. So I gave way and\ncried heartily.\nSoon I heard him earnestly entreating me to be composed. I said I could\nnot while he was in such a passion.\n“But I am not angry, Jane: I only love you too well; and you had\nsteeled your little pale face with such a resolute, frozen look, I\ncould not endure it. Hush, now, and wipe your eyes.”\nHis softened voice announced that he was subdued; so I, in my turn,\nbecame calm. Now he made an effort to rest his head on my shoulder, but\nI would not permit it. Then he would draw me to him: no.\n“Jane! Jane!” he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness it thrilled\nalong every nerve I had; “you don’t love me, then? It was only my\nstation, and the rank of my wife, that you valued? Now that you think\nme disqualified to become your husband, you recoil from my touch as if\nI were some toad or ape.”\nThese words cut me: yet what could I do or I say? I ought probably to\nhave done or said nothing; but I was so tortured by a sense of remorse\nat thus hurting his feelings, I could not control the wish to drop balm\nwhere I had wounded.\n“I _do_ love you,” I said, “more than ever: but I must not show or\nindulge the feeling: and this is the last time I must express it.”\n“The last time, Jane! What! do you think you can live with me, and see\nme daily, and yet, if you still love me, be always cold and distant?”\n“No, sir; that I am certain I could not; and therefore I see there is\nbut one way: but you will be furious if I mention it.”\n“Oh, mention it! If I storm, you have the art of weeping.”\n“Mr. Rochester, I must leave you.”\n“For how long, Jane? For a few minutes, while you smooth your\nhair—which is somewhat dishevelled; and bathe your face—which looks\nfeverish?”\n“I must leave Adèle and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole\nlife: I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange\nscenes.”\n“Of course: I told you you should. I pass over the madness about\nparting from me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to the new\nexistence, it is all right: you shall yet be my wife: I am not married.\nYou shall be Mrs. Rochester—both virtually and nominally. I shall keep\nonly to you so long as you and I live. You shall go to a place I have\nin the south of France: a whitewashed villa on the shores of the\nMediterranean. There you shall live a happy, and guarded, and most\ninnocent life. Never fear that I wish to lure you into error—to make\nyou my mistress. Why did you shake your head? Jane, you must be\nreasonable, or in truth I shall again become frantic.”\nHis voice and hand quivered: his large nostrils dilated; his eye\nblazed: still I dared to speak.\n“Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning by\nyourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your\nmistress: to say otherwise is sophistical—is false.”\n“Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man—you forget that: I am not\nlong-enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and\nyourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and—beware!”\nHe bared his wrist, and offered it to me: the blood was forsaking his\ncheek and lips, they were growing livid; I was distressed on all hands.\nTo agitate him thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred, was cruel:\nto yield was out of the question. I did what human beings do\ninstinctively when they are driven to utter extremity—looked for aid to\none higher than man: the words “God help me!” burst involuntarily from\nmy lips.\n“I am a fool!” cried Mr. Rochester suddenly. “I keep telling her I am\nnot married, and do not explain to her why. I forget she knows nothing\nof the character of that woman, or of the circumstances attending my\ninfernal union with her. Oh, I am certain Jane will agree with me in\nopinion, when she knows all that I know! Just put your hand in mine,\nJanet—that I may have the evidence of touch as well as sight, to prove\nyou are near me—and I will in a few words show you the real state of\nthe case. Can you listen to me?”\n“Yes, sir; for hours if you will.”\n“I ask only minutes. Jane, did you ever hear or know that I was not the\neldest son of my house: that I had once a brother older than I?”\n“I remember Mrs. Fairfax told me so once.”\n“And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping man?”\n“I have understood something to that effect.”\n“Well, Jane, being so, it was his resolution to keep the property\ntogether; he could not bear the idea of dividing his estate and leaving\nme a fair portion: all, he resolved, should go to my brother, Rowland.\nYet as little could he endure that a son of his should be a poor man. I\nmust be provided for by a wealthy marriage. He sought me a partner\nbetimes. Mr. Mason, a West India planter and merchant, was his old\nacquaintance. He was certain his possessions were real and vast: he\nmade inquiries. Mr. Mason, he found, had a son and daughter; and he\nlearned from him that he could and would give the latter a fortune of\nthirty thousand pounds: that sufficed. When I left college, I was sent\nout to Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me. My father\nsaid nothing about her money; but he told me Miss Mason was the boast\nof Spanish Town for her beauty: and this was no lie. I found her a fine\nwoman, in the style of Blanche Ingram: tall, dark, and majestic. Her\nfamily wished to secure me because I was of a good race; and so did\nshe. They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom saw\nher alone, and had very little private conversation with her. She\nflattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and\naccomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and\nenvy me. I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and being\nignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her. There is no\nfolly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience,\nthe rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its\ncommission. Her relatives encouraged me; competitors piqued me; she\nallured me: a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was.\nOh, I have no respect for myself when I think of that act!—an agony of\ninward contempt masters me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not\neven know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her\nnature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor\nrefinement in her mind or manners—and, I married her:—gross,\ngrovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might\nhave—But let me remember to whom I am speaking.\n“My bride’s mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead. The\nhoneymoon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut up in\na lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too—a complete dumb\nidiot. The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I cannot hate,\nwhilst I abhor all his kindred, because he has some grains of affection\nin his feeble mind, shown in the continued interest he takes in his\nwretched sister, and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me),\nwill probably be in the same state one day. My father and my brother\nRowland knew all this; but they thought only of the thirty thousand\npounds, and joined in the plot against me.\n“These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of\nconcealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife,\neven when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious\nto me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable\nof being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger—when I\nfound that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of\nthe day with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be\nsustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately\nreceived from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and\nimbecile—when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled\nhousehold, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her\nviolent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd,\ncontradictory, exacting orders—even then I restrained myself: I\neschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my\nrepentance and disgust in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I\nfelt.\n“Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details: some strong\nwords shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman\nupstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her\ncharacter ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices\nsprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check\nthem, and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had, and\nwhat giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities\nentailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother,\ndragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must\nattend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste.\n“My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four years\nmy father died too. I was rich enough now—yet poor to hideous\nindigence: a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was\nassociated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of\nme. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings: for the\ndoctors now discovered that _my wife_ was mad—her excesses had\nprematurely developed the germs of insanity. Jane, you don’t like my\nnarrative; you look almost sick—shall I defer the rest to another day?”\n“No, sir, finish it now; I pity you—I do earnestly pity you.”\n“Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of\ntribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those\nwho offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish\nhearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed\nwith ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not\nyour pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full\nat this moment—with which your eyes are now almost overflowing—with\nwhich your heart is heaving—with which your hand is trembling in mine.\nYour pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is\nthe very natal pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let the\ndaughter have free advent—my arms wait to receive her.”\n“Now, sir, proceed; what did you do when you found she was mad?”\n“Jane, I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect was\nall that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the world,\nI was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour; but I resolved to be\nclean in my own sight—and to the last I repudiated the contamination of\nher crimes, and wrenched myself from connection with her mental\ndefects. Still, society associated my name and person with hers; I yet\nsaw her and heard her daily: something of her breath (faugh!) mixed\nwith the air I breathed; and besides, I remembered I had once been her\nhusband—that recollection was then, and is now, inexpressibly odious to\nme; moreover, I knew that while she lived I could never be the husband\nof another and better wife; and, though five years my senior (her\nfamily and her father had lied to me even in the particular of her\nage), she was likely to live as long as I, being as robust in frame as\nshe was infirm in mind. Thus, at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless.\n“One night I had been awakened by her yells—(since the medical men had\npronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up)—it was a fiery\nWest Indian night; one of the description that frequently precede the\nhurricanes of those climates. Being unable to sleep in bed, I got up\nand opened the window. The air was like sulphur-steams—I could find no\nrefreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly\nround the room; the sea, which I could hear from thence, rumbled dull\nlike an earthquake—black clouds were casting up over it; the moon was\nsetting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball—she threw\nher last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of\ntempest. I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and\nmy ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out;\nwherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate,\nwith such language!—no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary\nthan she: though two rooms off, I heard every word—the thin partitions\nof the West India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish\ncries.\n“‘This life,’ said I at last, ‘is hell: this is the air—those are the\nsounds of the bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver myself from it\nif I can. The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the\nheavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. Of the fanatic’s burning eternity\nI have no fear: there is not a future state worse than this present\none—let me break away, and go home to God!’\n“I said this whilst I knelt down at and unlocked a trunk which\ncontained a brace of loaded pistols: I meant to shoot myself. I only\nentertained the intention for a moment; for, not being insane, the\ncrisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had originated the\nwish and design of self-destruction, was past in a second.\n“A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the\nopen casement: the storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed, and the\nair grew pure. I then framed and fixed a resolution. While I walked\nunder the dripping orange-trees of my wet garden, and amongst its\ndrenched pomegranates and pine-apples, and while the refulgent dawn of\nthe tropics kindled round me—I reasoned thus, Jane—and now listen; for\nit was true Wisdom that consoled me in that hour, and showed me the\nright path to follow.\n“The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed\nleaves, and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty; my heart,\ndried up and scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone, and filled\nwith living blood—my being longed for renewal—my soul thirsted for a\npure draught. I saw hope revive—and felt regeneration possible. From a\nflowery arch at the bottom of my garden I gazed over the sea—bluer than\nthe sky: the old world was beyond; clear prospects opened thus:—\n“‘Go,’ said Hope, ‘and live again in Europe: there it is not known what\na sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you. You\nmay take the maniac with you to England; confine her with due\nattendance and precautions at Thornfield: then travel yourself to what\nclime you will, and form what new tie you like. That woman, who has so\nabused your long-suffering, so sullied your name, so outraged your\nhonour, so blighted your youth, is not your wife, nor are you her\nhusband. See that she is cared for as her condition demands, and you\nhave done all that God and humanity require of you. Let her identity,\nher connection with yourself, be buried in oblivion: you are bound to\nimpart them to no living being. Place her in safety and comfort:\nshelter her degradation with secrecy, and leave her.’\n“I acted precisely on this suggestion. My father and brother had not\nmade my marriage known to their acquaintance; because, in the very\nfirst letter I wrote to apprise them of the union—having already begun\nto experience extreme disgust of its consequences, and, from the family\ncharacter and constitution, seeing a hideous future opening to me—I\nadded an urgent charge to keep it secret: and very soon the infamous\nconduct of the wife my father had selected for me was such as to make\nhim blush to own her as his daughter-in-law. Far from desiring to\npublish the connection, he became as anxious to conceal it as myself.\n“To England, then, I conveyed her; a fearful voyage I had with such a\nmonster in the vessel. Glad was I when I at last got her to Thornfield,\nand saw her safely lodged in that third-storey room, of whose secret\ninner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild beast’s den—a\ngoblin’s cell. I had some trouble in finding an attendant for her, as\nit was necessary to select one on whose fidelity dependence could be\nplaced; for her ravings would inevitably betray my secret: besides, she\nhad lucid intervals of days—sometimes weeks—which she filled up with\nabuse of me. At last I hired Grace Poole from the Grimbsy Retreat. She\nand the surgeon, Carter (who dressed Mason’s wounds that night he was\nstabbed and worried), are the only two I have ever admitted to my\nconfidence. Mrs. Fairfax may indeed have suspected something, but she\ncould have gained no precise knowledge as to facts. Grace has, on the\nwhole, proved a good keeper; though, owing partly to a fault of her\nown, of which it appears nothing can cure her, and which is incident to\nher harassing profession, her vigilance has been more than once lulled\nand baffled. The lunatic is both cunning and malignant; she has never\nfailed to take advantage of her guardian’s temporary lapses; once to\nsecrete the knife with which she stabbed her brother, and twice to\npossess herself of the key of her cell, and issue therefrom in the\nnight-time. On the first of these occasions, she perpetrated the\nattempt to burn me in my bed; on the second, she paid that ghastly\nvisit to you. I thank Providence, who watched over you, that she then\nspent her fury on your wedding apparel, which perhaps brought back\nvague reminiscences of her own bridal days: but on what might have\nhappened, I cannot endure to reflect. When I think of the thing which\nflew at my throat this morning, hanging its black and scarlet visage\nover the nest of my dove, my blood curdles—”\n“And what, sir,” I asked, while he paused, “did you do when you had\nsettled her here? Where did you go?”\n“What did I do, Jane? I transformed myself into a will-o’-the-wisp.\nWhere did I go? I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the\nMarch-spirit. I sought the Continent, and went devious through all its\nlands. My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent\nwoman, whom I could love: a contrast to the fury I left at Thornfield—”\n“But you could not marry, sir.”\n“I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought. It was not\nmy original intention to deceive, as I have deceived you. I meant to\ntell my tale plainly, and make my proposals openly: and it appeared to\nme so absolutely rational that I should be considered free to love and\nbe loved, I never doubted some woman might be found willing and able to\nunderstand my case and accept me, in spite of the curse with which I\nwas burdened.”\n“Well, sir?”\n“When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open\nyour eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless\nmovement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and\nyou wanted to read the tablet of one’s heart. But before I go on, tell\nme what you mean by your ‘Well, sir?’ It is a small phrase very\nfrequent with you; and which many a time has drawn me on and on through\ninterminable talk: I don’t very well know why.”\n“I mean,—What next? How did you proceed? What came of such an event?”\n“Precisely! and what do you wish to know now?”\n“Whether you found any one you liked: whether you asked her to marry\nyou; and what she said.”\n“I can tell you whether I found any one I liked, and whether I asked\nher to marry me: but what she said is yet to be recorded in the book of\nFate. For ten long years I roved about, living first in one capital,\nthen another: sometimes in St. Petersburg; oftener in Paris;\noccasionally in Rome, Naples, and Florence. Provided with plenty of\nmoney and the passport of an old name, I could choose my own society:\nno circles were closed against me. I sought my ideal of a woman amongst\nEnglish ladies, French countesses, Italian signoras, and German\ngräfinnen. I could not find her. Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, I\nthought I caught a glance, heard a tone, beheld a form, which announced\nthe realisation of my dream: but I was presently undeceived. You are\nnot to suppose that I desired perfection, either of mind or person. I\nlonged only for what suited me—for the antipodes of the Creole: and I\nlonged vainly. Amongst them all I found not one whom, had I been ever\nso free, I—warned as I was of the risks, the horrors, the loathings of\nincongruous unions—would have asked to marry me. Disappointment made me\nreckless. I tried dissipation—never debauchery: that I hated, and hate.\nThat was my Indian Messalina’s attribute: rooted disgust at it and her\nrestrained me much, even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that bordered on\nriot seemed to approach me to her and her vices, and I eschewed it.\n“Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship of\nmistresses. The first I chose was Céline Varens—another of those steps\nwhich make a man spurn himself when he recalls them. You already know\nwhat she was, and how my liaison with her terminated. She had two\nsuccessors: an Italian, Giacinta, and a German, Clara; both considered\nsingularly handsome. What was their beauty to me in a few weeks?\nGiacinta was unprincipled and violent: I tired of her in three months.\nClara was honest and quiet; but heavy, mindless, and unimpressible: not\none whit to my taste. I was glad to give her a sufficient sum to set\nher up in a good line of business, and so get decently rid of her. But,\nJane, I see by your face you are not forming a very favourable opinion\nof me just now. You think me an unfeeling, loose-principled rake: don’t\nyou?”\n“I don’t like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir. Did it\nnot seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way, first with one\nmistress and then another? You talk of it as a mere matter of course.”\n“It was with me; and I did not like it. It was a grovelling fashion of\nexistence: I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is\nthe next worse thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and\nalways by position, inferior: and to live familiarly with inferiors is\ndegrading. I now hate the recollection of the time I passed with\nCéline, Giacinta, and Clara.”\nI felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain\ninference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching\nthat had ever been instilled into me, as—under any pretext—with any\njustification—through any temptation—to become the successor of these\npoor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now\nin his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterance to this\nconviction: it was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my heart, that\nit might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of trial.\n“Now, Jane, why don’t you say ‘Well, sir?’ I have not done. You are\nlooking grave. You disapprove of me still, I see. But let me come to\nthe point. Last January, rid of all mistresses—in a harsh, bitter frame\nof mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life—corroded with\ndisappointment, sourly disposed against all men, and especially against\nall _woman_kind (for I began to regard the notion of an intellectual,\nfaithful, loving woman as a mere dream), recalled by business, I came\nback to England.\n“On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall.\nAbhorred spot! I expected no peace—no pleasure there. On a stile in Hay\nLane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself. I passed it as\nnegligently as I did the pollard willow opposite to it: I had no\npresentiment of what it would be to me; no inward warning that the\narbitress of my life—my genius for good or evil—waited there in humble\nguise. I did not know it, even when, on the occasion of Mesrour’s\naccident, it came up and gravely offered me help. Childish and slender\ncreature! It seemed as if a linnet had hopped to my foot and proposed\nto bear me on its tiny wing. I was surly; but the thing would not go:\nit stood by me with strange perseverance, and looked and spoke with a\nsort of authority. I must be aided, and by that hand: and aided I was.\n“When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new—a fresh sap\nand sense—stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt that this elf\nmust return to me—that it belonged to my house down below—or I could\nnot have felt it pass away from under my hand, and seen it vanish\nbehind the dim hedge, without singular regret. I heard you come home\nthat night, Jane, though probably you were not aware that I thought of\nyou or watched for you. The next day I observed you—myself unseen—for\nhalf-an-hour, while you played with Adèle in the gallery. It was a\nsnowy day, I recollect, and you could not go out of doors. I was in my\nroom; the door was ajar: I could both listen and watch. Adèle claimed\nyour outward attention for a while; yet I fancied your thoughts were\nelsewhere: but you were very patient with her, my little Jane; you\ntalked to her and amused her a long time. When at last she left you,\nyou lapsed at once into deep reverie: you betook yourself slowly to\npace the gallery. Now and then, in passing a casement, you glanced out\nat the thick-falling snow; you listened to the sobbing wind, and again\nyou paced gently on and dreamed. I think those day visions were not\ndark: there was a pleasurable illumination in your eye occasionally, a\nsoft excitement in your aspect, which told of no bitter, bilious,\nhypochondriac brooding: your look revealed rather the sweet musings of\nyouth when its spirit follows on willing wings the flight of Hope up\nand on to an ideal heaven. The voice of Mrs. Fairfax, speaking to a\nservant in the hall, wakened you: and how curiously you smiled to and\nat yourself, Janet! There was much sense in your smile: it was very\nshrewd, and seemed to make light of your own abstraction. It seemed to\nsay—‘My fine visions are all very well, but I must not forget they are\nabsolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my\nbrain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract\nto travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter.’ You ran\ndownstairs and demanded of Mrs. Fairfax some occupation: the weekly\nhouse accounts to make up, or something of that sort, I think it was. I\nwas vexed with you for getting out of my sight.\n“Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you to my\npresence. An unusual—to me—a perfectly new character I suspected was\nyours: I desired to search it deeper and know it better. You entered\nthe room with a look and air at once shy and independent: you were\nquaintly dressed—much as you are now. I made you talk: ere long I found\nyou full of strange contrasts. Your garb and manner were restricted by\nrule; your air was often diffident, and altogether that of one refined\nby nature, but absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of\nmaking herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or\nblunder; yet when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing\neye to your interlocutor’s face: there was penetration and power in\neach glance you gave; when plied by close questions, you found ready\nand round answers. Very soon you seemed to get used to me: I believe\nyou felt the existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross\nmaster, Jane; for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain\npleasant ease tranquillised your manner: snarl as I would, you showed\nno surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure at my moroseness; you\nwatched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet sagacious\ngrace I cannot describe. I was at once content and stimulated with what\nI saw: I liked what I had seen, and wished to see more. Yet, for a long\ntime, I treated you distantly, and sought your company rarely. I was an\nintellectual epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making\nthis novel and piquant acquaintance: besides, I was for a while\ntroubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its\nbloom would fade—the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not\nthen know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant\nresemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem. Moreover, I wished to\nsee whether you would seek me if I shunned you—but you did not; you\nkept in the schoolroom as still as your own desk and easel; if by\nchance I met you, you passed me as soon, and with as little token of\nrecognition, as was consistent with respect. Your habitual expression\nin those days, Jane, was a thoughtful look; not despondent, for you\nwere not sickly; but not buoyant, for you had little hope, and no\nactual pleasure. I wondered what you thought of me, or if you ever\nthought of me, and resolved to find this out.\n“I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your glance,\nand genial in your manner, when you conversed: I saw you had a social\nheart; it was the silent schoolroom—it was the tedium of your life—that\nmade you mournful. I permitted myself the delight of being kind to you;\nkindness stirred emotion soon: your face became soft in expression,\nyour tones gentle; I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a\ngrateful happy accent. I used to enjoy a chance meeting with you, Jane,\nat this time: there was a curious hesitation in your manner: you\nglanced at me with a slight trouble—a hovering doubt: you did not know\nwhat my caprice might be—whether I was going to play the master and be\nstern, or the friend and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often\nto simulate the first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out\ncordially, such bloom and light and bliss rose to your young, wistful\nfeatures, I had much ado often to avoid straining you then and there to\nmy heart.”\n“Don’t talk any more of those days, sir,” I interrupted, furtively\ndashing away some tears from my eyes; his language was torture to me;\nfor I knew what I must do—and do soon—and all these reminiscences, and\nthese revelations of his feelings only made my work more difficult.\n“No, Jane,” he returned: “what necessity is there to dwell on the Past,\nwhen the Present is so much surer—the Future so much brighter?”\nI shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion.\n“You see now how the case stands—do you not?” he continued. “After a\nyouth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary\nsolitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have\nfound _you_. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am\nbound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted,\nlovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans\nto you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence\nabout you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in\none.\n“It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you. To\ntell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery: you know now that I\nhad but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I\nfeared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early\ninstilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before hazarding\nconfidences. This was cowardly: I should have appealed to your\nnobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do now—opened to you plainly\nmy life of agony—described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher\nand worthier existence—shown to you, not my _resolution_ (that word is\nweak), but my resistless _bent_ to love faithfully and well, where I am\nfaithfully and well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to\naccept my pledge of fidelity and to give me yours. Jane—give it me\nnow.”\nA pause.\n“Why are you silent, Jane?”\nI was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals.\nTerrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning! Not a human\nbeing that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved;\nand him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce\nlove and idol. One drear word comprised my intolerable duty—“Depart!”\n“Jane, you understand what I want of you? Just this promise—‘I will be\nyours, Mr. Rochester.’”\n“Mr. Rochester, I will _not_ be yours.”\nAnother long silence.\n“Jane!” recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down with\ngrief, and turned me stone-cold with ominous terror—for this still\nvoice was the pant of a lion rising—“Jane, do you mean to go one way in\nthe world, and to let me go another?”\n“I do.”\n“Jane” (bending towards and embracing me), “do you mean it now?”\n“I do.”\n“And now?” softly kissing my forehead and cheek.\n“I do,” extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely.\n“Oh, Jane, this is bitter! This—this is wicked. It would not be wicked\nto love me.”\n“It would to obey you.”\nA wild look raised his brows—crossed his features: he rose; but he\nforebore yet. I laid my hand on the back of a chair for support: I\nshook, I feared—but I resolved.\n“One instant, Jane. Give one glance to my horrible life when you are\ngone. All happiness will be torn away with you. What then is left? For\na wife I have but the maniac upstairs: as well might you refer me to\nsome corpse in yonder churchyard. What shall I do, Jane? Where turn for\na companion and for some hope?”\n“Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet\nagain there.”\n“Then you will not yield?”\n“No.”\n“Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed?” His voice\nrose.\n“I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil.”\n“Then you snatch love and innocence from me? You fling me back on lust\nfor a passion—vice for an occupation?”\n“Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it\nfor myself. We were born to strive and endure—you as well as I: do so.\nYou will forget me before I forget you.”\n“You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I declared I\ncould not change: you tell me to my face I shall change soon. And what\na distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is\nproved by your conduct! Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to\ndespair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by\nthe breach? for you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you\nneed fear to offend by living with me?”\nThis was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned\ntraitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They\nspoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. “Oh,\ncomply!” it said. “Think of his misery; think of his danger—look at his\nstate when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the\nrecklessness following on despair—soothe him; save him; love him; tell\nhim you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for _you_? or\nwho will be injured by what you do?”\nStill indomitable was the reply—“_I_ care for myself. The more\nsolitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I\nwill respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by\nman. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and\nnot mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when\nthere is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body\nand soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they;\ninviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break\nthem, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always\nbelieved; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am\ninsane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating\nfaster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone\ndeterminations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant\nmy foot.”\nI did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so. His\nfury was wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a moment,\nwhatever followed; he crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped\nmy waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance: physically, I\nfelt, at the moment, powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and\nglow of a furnace: mentally, I still possessed my soul, and with it the\ncertainty of ultimate safety. The soul, fortunately, has an\ninterpreter—often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter—in\nthe eye. My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce face I\ngave an involuntary sigh; his gripe was painful, and my over-taxed\nstrength almost exhausted.\n“Never,” said he, as he ground his teeth, “never was anything at once\nso frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!” (And he\nshook me with the force of his hold.) “I could bend her with my finger\nand thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I\ncrushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing\nlooking out of it, defying me, with more than courage—with a stern\ntriumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it—the savage,\nbeautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage\nwill only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but\nthe inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor\nof its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit—with will and energy,\nand virtue and purity—that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of\nyourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart,\nif you would: seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like\nan essence—you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh! come, Jane,\ncome!”\nAs he said this, he released me from his clutch, and only looked at me.\nThe look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain: only an\nidiot, however, would have succumbed now. I had dared and baffled his\nfury; I must elude his sorrow: I retired to the door.\n“You are going, Jane?”\n“I am going, sir.”\n“You are leaving me?”\n“Yes.”\n“You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My deep\nlove, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?”\nWhat unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to reiterate\nfirmly, “I am going.”\n“Jane!”\n“Mr. Rochester!”\n“Withdraw, then,—I consent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish.\nGo up to your own room; think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a\nglance on my sufferings—think of me.”\nHe turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. “Oh, Jane! my\nhope—my love—my life!” broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a\ndeep, strong sob.\nI had already gained the door; but, reader, I walked back—walked back\nas determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him; I turned his\nface from the cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I smoothed his hair\nwith my hand.\n“God bless you, my dear master!” I said. “God keep you from harm and\nwrong—direct you, solace you—reward you well for your past kindness to\nme.”\n“Little Jane’s love would have been my best reward,” he answered;\n“without it, my heart is broken. But Jane will give me her love:\nyes—nobly, generously.”\nUp the blood rushed to his face; forth flashed the fire from his eyes;\nerect he sprang; he held his arms out; but I evaded the embrace, and at\nonce quitted the room.\n“Farewell!” was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added,\n“Farewell for ever!”\nThat night I never thought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as soon\nas I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the scenes of\nchildhood: I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; that the night\nwas dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long\nago had struck me into syncope, recalled in this vision, seemed\nglidingly to mount the wall, and tremblingly to pause in the centre of\nthe obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head to look: the roof resolved to\nclouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours\nshe is about to sever. I watched her come—watched with the strangest\nanticipation; as though some word of doom were to be written on her\ndisk. She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first\npenetrated the sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a\nwhite human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow\nearthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit:\nimmeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my\nheart—\n“My daughter, flee temptation.”\n“Mother, I will.”\nSo I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. It was yet\nnight, but July nights are short: soon after midnight, dawn comes. “It\ncannot be too early to commence the task I have to fulfil,” thought I.\nI rose: I was dressed; for I had taken off nothing but my shoes. I knew\nwhere to find in my drawers some linen, a locket, a ring. In seeking\nthese articles, I encountered the beads of a pearl necklace Mr.\nRochester had forced me to accept a few days ago. I left that; it was\nnot mine: it was the visionary bride’s who had melted in air. The other\narticles I made up in a parcel; my purse, containing twenty shillings\n(it was all I had), I put in my pocket: I tied on my straw bonnet,\npinned my shawl, took the parcel and my slippers, which I would not put\non yet, and stole from my room.\n“Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!” I whispered, as I glided past her door.\n“Farewell, my darling Adèle!” I said, as I glanced towards the nursery.\nNo thought could be admitted of entering to embrace her. I had to\ndeceive a fine ear: for aught I knew it might now be listening.\nI would have got past Mr. Rochester’s chamber without a pause; but my\nheart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was\nforced to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking\nrestlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I\nlistened. There was a heaven—a temporary heaven—in this room for me, if\nI chose: I had but to go in and to say—\n“Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till\ndeath,” and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of\nthis.\nThat kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with impatience\nfor day. He would send for me in the morning; I should be gone. He\nwould have me sought for: vainly. He would feel himself forsaken; his\nlove rejected: he would suffer; perhaps grow desperate. I thought of\nthis too. My hand moved towards the lock: I caught it back, and glided\non.\nDrearily I wound my way downstairs: I knew what I had to do, and I did\nit mechanically. I sought the key of the side-door in the kitchen; I\nsought, too, a phial of oil and a feather; I oiled the key and the\nlock. I got some water, I got some bread: for perhaps I should have to\nwalk far; and my strength, sorely shaken of late, must not break down.\nAll this I did without one sound. I opened the door, passed out, shut\nit softly. Dim dawn glimmered in the yard. The great gates were closed\nand locked; but a wicket in one of them was only latched. Through that\nI departed: it, too, I shut; and now I was out of Thornfield.\nA mile off, beyond the fields, lay a road which stretched in the\ncontrary direction to Millcote; a road I had never travelled, but often\nnoticed, and wondered where it led: thither I bent my steps. No\nreflection was to be allowed now: not one glance was to be cast back;\nnot even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the\npast or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet—so deadly\nsad—that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break\ndown my energy. The last was an awful blank: something like the world\nwhen the deluge was gone by.\nI skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I believe\nit was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I had put on\nwhen I left the house, were soon wet with dew. But I looked neither to\nrising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature. He who is taken out\nto pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers\nthat smile on his road, but of the block and axe-edge; of the\ndisseverment of bone and vein; of the grave gaping at the end: and I\nthought of drear flight and homeless wandering—and oh! with agony I\nthought of what I left. I could not help it. I thought of him now—in\nhis room—watching the sunrise; hoping I should soon come to say I would\nstay with him and be his. I longed to be his; I panted to return: it\nwas not too late; I could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement.\nAs yet my flight, I was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and be\nhis comforter—his pride; his redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin.\nOh, that fear of his self-abandonment—far worse than my abandonment—how\nit goaded me! It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast; it tore me when\nI tried to extract it; it sickened me when remembrance thrust it\nfarther in. Birds began singing in brake and copse: birds were faithful\nto their mates; birds were emblems of love. What was I? In the midst of\nmy pain of heart and frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I\nhad no solace from self-approbation: none even from self-respect. I had\ninjured—wounded—left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes. Still I\ncould not turn, nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. As to my\nown will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled\nthe other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way:\nfast, fast I went like one delirious. A weakness, beginning inwardly,\nextending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell: I lay on the ground some\nminutes, pressing my face to the wet turf. I had some fear—or hope—that\nhere I should die: but I was soon up; crawling forwards on my hands and\nknees, and then again raised to my feet—as eager and as determined as\never to reach the road.\nWhen I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge; and\nwhile I sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coach come on. I stood up and\nlifted my hand; it stopped. I asked where it was going: the driver\nnamed a place a long way off, and where I was sure Mr. Rochester had no\nconnections. I asked for what sum he would take me there; he said\nthirty shillings; I answered I had but twenty; well, he would try to\nmake it do. He further gave me leave to get into the inside, as the\nvehicle was empty: I entered, was shut in, and it rolled on its way.\nGentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never\nshed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May\nyou never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in\nthat hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the\ninstrument of evil to what you wholly love.\n', 'Two days are passed. It is a summer evening; the coachman has set me\ndown at a place called Whitcross; he could take me no farther for the\nsum I had given, and I was not possessed of another shilling in the\nworld. The coach is a mile off by this time; I am alone. At this moment\nI discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of the\ncoach, where I had placed it for safety; there it remains, there it\nmust remain; and now, I am absolutely destitute.\nWhitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar set\nup where four roads meet: whitewashed, I suppose, to be more obvious at\na distance and in darkness. Four arms spring from its summit: the\nnearest town to which these point is, according to the inscription,\ndistant ten miles; the farthest, above twenty. From the well-known\nnames of these towns I learn in what county I have lighted; a\nnorth-midland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with mountain: this I\nsee. There are great moors behind and on each hand of me; there are\nwaves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet. The\npopulation here must be thin, and I see no passengers on these roads:\nthey stretch out east, west, north, and south—white, broad, lonely;\nthey are all cut in the moor, and the heather grows deep and wild to\ntheir very verge. Yet a chance traveller might pass by; and I wish no\neye to see me now: strangers would wonder what I am doing, lingering\nhere at the sign-post, evidently objectless and lost. I might be\nquestioned: I could give no answer but what would sound incredible and\nexcite suspicion. Not a tie holds me to human society at this\nmoment—not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are—none\nthat saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no\nrelative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and\nask repose.\nI struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply\nfurrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I\nturned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in\na hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of moor were about me;\nthe crag protected my head: the sky was over that.\nSome time passed before I felt tranquil even here: I had a vague dread\nthat wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or poacher might\ndiscover me. If a gust of wind swept the waste, I looked up, fearing it\nwas the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled, I imagined it a man.\nFinding my apprehensions unfounded, however, and calmed by the deep\nsilence that reigned as evening declined at nightfall, I took\nconfidence. As yet I had not thought; I had only listened, watched,\ndreaded; now I regained the faculty of reflection.\nWhat was I to do? Where to go? Oh, intolerable questions, when I could\ndo nothing and go nowhere!—when a long way must yet be measured by my\nweary, trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation—when cold\ncharity must be entreated before I could get a lodging: reluctant\nsympathy importuned, almost certain repulse incurred, before my tale\ncould be listened to, or one of my wants relieved!\nI touched the heath: it was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the\nsummer day. I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled\njust above the chasm ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious softness;\nno breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she\nloved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only\nmistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness.\nTo-night, at least, I would be her guest, as I was her child: my mother\nwould lodge me without money and without price. I had one morsel of\nbread yet: the remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed\nthrough at noon with a stray penny—my last coin. I saw ripe bilberries\ngleaming here and there, like jet beads in the heath: I gathered a\nhandful and ate them with the bread. My hunger, sharp before, was, if\nnot satisfied, appeased by this hermit’s meal. I said my evening\nprayers at its conclusion, and then chose my couch.\nI said my evening prayers\nBeside the crag the heath was very deep: when I lay down my feet were\nburied in it; rising high on each side, it left only a narrow space for\nthe night-air to invade. I folded my shawl double, and spread it over\nme for a coverlet; a low, mossy swell was my pillow. Thus lodged, I was\nnot, at least at the commencement of the night, cold.\nMy rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. It\nplained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords. It\ntrembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom; it bemoaned him with bitter\npity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and, impotent as a bird\nwith both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain\nattempts to seek him.\nWorn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was\ncome, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for\nthe companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but\ncertainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest\nscale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His\nworlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude,\nHis omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for\nMr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty\nMilky-way. Remembering what it was—what countless systems there swept\nspace like a soft trace of light—I felt the might and strength of God.\nSure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew\nthat neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I\nturned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the\nSaviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe: he was God’s, and by God\nwould he be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere\nlong in sleep forgot sorrow.\nBut next day, Want came to me pale and bare. Long after the little\nbirds had left their nests; long after bees had come in the sweet prime\nof day to gather the heath honey before the dew was dried—when the long\nmorning shadows were curtailed, and the sun filled earth and sky—I got\nup, and I looked round me.\nWhat a still, hot, perfect day! What a golden desert this spreading\nmoor! Everywhere sunshine. I wished I could live in it and on it. I saw\na lizard run over the crag; I saw a bee busy among the sweet\nbilberries. I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard, that\nI might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here. But I was\na human being, and had a human being’s wants: I must not linger where\nthere was nothing to supply them. I rose; I looked back at the bed I\nhad left. Hopeless of the future, I wished but this—that my Maker had\nthat night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and\nthat this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with\nfate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil\nof this wilderness. Life, however, was yet in my possession, with all\nits requirements, and pains, and responsibilities. The burden must be\ncarried; the want provided for; the suffering endured; the\nresponsibility fulfilled. I set out.\nWhitcross regained, I followed a road which led from the sun, now\nfervent and high. By no other circumstance had I will to decide my\nchoice. I walked a long time, and when I thought I had nearly done\nenough, and might conscientiously yield to the fatigue that almost\noverpowered me—might relax this forced action, and, sitting down on a\nstone I saw near, submit resistlessly to the apathy that clogged heart\nand limb—I heard a bell chime—a church bell.\nI turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic\nhills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw\na hamlet and a spire. All the valley at my right hand was full of\npasture-fields, and cornfields, and wood; and a glittering stream ran\nzig-zag through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain, the\nsombre woodland, the clear and sunny lea. Recalled by the rumbling of\nwheels to the road before me, I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up\nthe hill, and not far beyond were two cows and their drover. Human life\nand human labour were near. I must struggle on: strive to live and bend\nto toil like the rest.\nAbout two o’clock P.M. I entered the village. At the bottom of its one\nstreet there was a little shop with some cakes of bread in the window.\nI coveted a cake of bread. With that refreshment I could perhaps regain\na degree of energy: without it, it would be difficult to proceed. The\nwish to have some strength and some vigour returned to me as soon as I\nwas amongst my fellow-beings. I felt it would be degrading to faint\nwith hunger on the causeway of a hamlet. Had I nothing about me I could\noffer in exchange for one of these rolls? I considered. I had a small\nsilk handkerchief tied round my throat; I had my gloves. I could hardly\ntell how men and women in extremities of destitution proceeded. I did\nnot know whether either of these articles would be accepted: probably\nthey would not; but I must try.\nI entered the shop: a woman was there. Seeing a respectably-dressed\nperson, a lady as she supposed, she came forward with civility. How\ncould she serve me? I was seized with shame: my tongue would not utter\nthe request I had prepared. I dared not offer her the half-worn gloves,\nthe creased handkerchief: besides, I felt it would be absurd. I only\nbegged permission to sit down a moment, as I was tired. Disappointed in\nthe expectation of a customer, she coolly acceded to my request. She\npointed to a seat; I sank into it. I felt sorely urged to weep; but\nconscious how unseasonable such a manifestation would be, I restrained\nit. Soon I asked her “if there were any dressmaker or plain-workwoman\nin the village?”\n“Yes; two or three. Quite as many as there was employment for.”\nI reflected. I was driven to the point now. I was brought face to face\nwith Necessity. I stood in the position of one without a resource,\nwithout a friend, without a coin. I must do something. What? I must\napply somewhere. Where?\n“Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant was\nwanted?”\n“Nay; she couldn’t say.”\n“What was the chief trade in this place? What did most of the people\ndo?”\n“Some were farm labourers; a good deal worked at Mr. Oliver’s\nneedle-factory, and at the foundry.”\n“Did Mr. Oliver employ women?”\n“Nay; it was men’s work.”\n“And what do the women do?”\n“I knawn’t,” was the answer. “Some does one thing, and some another.\nPoor folk mun get on as they can.”\nShe seemed to be tired of my questions: and, indeed, what claim had I\nto importune her? A neighbour or two came in; my chair was evidently\nwanted. I took leave.\nI passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the\nright hand and to the left; but I could discover no pretext, nor see an\ninducement to enter any. I rambled round the hamlet, going sometimes to\na little distance and returning again, for an hour or more. Much\nexhausted, and suffering greatly now for want of food, I turned aside\ninto a lane and sat down under the hedge. Ere many minutes had elapsed,\nI was again on my feet, however, and again searching something—a\nresource, or at least an informant. A pretty little house stood at the\ntop of the lane, with a garden before it, exquisitely neat and\nbrilliantly blooming. I stopped at it. What business had I to approach\nthe white door or touch the glittering knocker? In what way could it\npossibly be the interest of the inhabitants of that dwelling to serve\nme? Yet I drew near and knocked. A mild-looking, cleanly-attired young\nwoman opened the door. In such a voice as might be expected from a\nhopeless heart and fainting frame—a voice wretchedly low and\nfaltering—I asked if a servant was wanted here?\n“No,” said she; “we do not keep a servant.”\n“Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind?” I\ncontinued. “I am a stranger, without acquaintance in this place. I want\nsome work: no matter what.”\nBut it was not her business to think for me, or to seek a place for me:\nbesides, in her eyes, how doubtful must have appeared my character,\nposition, tale. She shook her head, she “was sorry she could give me no\ninformation,” and the white door closed, quite gently and civilly: but\nit shut me out. If she had held it open a little longer, I believe I\nshould have begged a piece of bread; for I was now brought low.\nI could not bear to return to the sordid village, where, besides, no\nprospect of aid was visible. I should have longed rather to deviate to\na wood I saw not far off, which appeared in its thick shade to offer\ninviting shelter; but I was so sick, so weak, so gnawed with nature’s\ncravings, instinct kept me roaming round abodes where there was a\nchance of food. Solitude would be no solitude—rest no rest—while the\nvulture, hunger, thus sank beak and talons in my side.\nI drew near houses; I left them, and came back again, and again I\nwandered away: always repelled by the consciousness of having no claim\nto ask—no right to expect interest in my isolated lot. Meantime, the\nafternoon advanced, while I thus wandered about like a lost and\nstarving dog. In crossing a field, I saw the church spire before me: I\nhastened towards it. Near the churchyard, and in the middle of a\ngarden, stood a well-built though small house, which I had no doubt was\nthe parsonage. I remembered that strangers who arrive at a place where\nthey have no friends, and who want employment, sometimes apply to the\nclergyman for introduction and aid. It is the clergyman’s function to\nhelp—at least with advice—those who wished to help themselves. I seemed\nto have something like a right to seek counsel here. Renewing then my\ncourage, and gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed on. I\nreached the house, and knocked at the kitchen-door. An old woman\nopened: I asked was this the parsonage?\n“Yes.”\n“Was the clergyman in?”\n“No.”\n“Would he be in soon?”\n“No, he was gone from home.”\n“To a distance?”\n“Not so far—happen three mile. He had been called away by the sudden\ndeath of his father: he was at Marsh End now, and would very likely\nstay there a fortnight longer.”\n“Was there any lady of the house?”\n“Nay, there was naught but her, and she was housekeeper;” and of her,\nreader, I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I was\nsinking; I could not yet beg; and again I crawled away.\nOnce more I took off my handkerchief—once more I thought of the cakes\nof bread in the little shop. Oh, for but a crust! for but one mouthful\nto allay the pang of famine! Instinctively I turned my face again to\nthe village; I found the shop again, and I went in; and though others\nwere there besides the woman I ventured the request—“Would she give me\na roll for this handkerchief?”\nShe looked at me with evident suspicion: “Nay, she never sold stuff i’\nthat way.”\nAlmost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again refused. “How\ncould she tell where I had got the handkerchief?” she said.\n“Would she take my gloves?”\n“No! what could she do with them?”\nReader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is\nenjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I\ncan scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral\ndegradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a\nrecollection ever to be willingly dwelt on. I blamed none of those who\nrepulsed me. I felt it was what was to be expected, and what could not\nbe helped: an ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion; a\nwell-dressed beggar inevitably so. To be sure, what I begged was\nemployment; but whose business was it to provide me with employment?\nNot, certainly, that of persons who saw me then for the first time, and\nwho knew nothing about my character. And as to the woman who would not\ntake my handkerchief in exchange for her bread, why, she was right, if\nthe offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable. Let me\ncondense now. I am sick of the subject.\nA little before dark I passed a farm-house, at the open door of which\nthe farmer was sitting, eating his supper of bread and cheese. I\nstopped and said—\n“Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry.” He cast on\nme a glance of surprise; but without answering, he cut a thick slice\nfrom his loaf, and gave it to me. I imagine he did not think I was a\nbeggar, but only an eccentric sort of lady, who had taken a fancy to\nhis brown loaf. As soon as I was out of sight of his house, I sat down\nand ate it.\nI could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in the\nwood I have before alluded to. But my night was wretched, my rest\nbroken: the ground was damp, the air cold: besides, intruders passed\nnear me more than once, and I had again and again to change my\nquarters: no sense of safety or tranquillity befriended me. Towards\nmorning it rained; the whole of the following day was wet. Do not ask\nme, reader, to give a minute account of that day; as before, I sought\nwork; as before, I was repulsed; as before, I starved; but once did\nfood pass my lips. At the door of a cottage I saw a little girl about\nto throw a mess of cold porridge into a pig trough. “Will you give me\nthat?” I asked.\n“Will you give me that?” I asked\nShe stared at me. “Mother!” she exclaimed, “there is a woman wants me\nto give her these porridge.”\n“Well lass,” replied a voice within, “give it her if she’s a beggar. T’\npig doesn’t want it.”\nThe girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it\nravenously.\nAs the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path,\nwhich I had been pursuing an hour or more.\n“My strength is quite failing me,” I said in a soliloquy. “I feel I\ncannot go much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night? While\nthe rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground?\nI fear I cannot do otherwise: for who will receive me? But it will be\nvery dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this\nsense of desolation—this total prostration of hope. In all likelihood,\nthough, I should die before morning. And why cannot I reconcile myself\nto the prospect of death? Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life?\nBecause I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is living: and then, to die\nof want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively. Oh,\nProvidence! sustain me a little longer! Aid!—direct me!”\nMy glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape. I saw I had\nstrayed far from the village: it was quite out of sight. The very\ncultivation surrounding it had disappeared. I had, by cross-ways and\nby-paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland; and now, only a\nfew fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which\nthey were scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and the dusky hill.\n“Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented\nroad,” I reflected. “And far better that crows and ravens—if any ravens\nthere be in these regions—should pick my flesh from my bones, than that\nthey should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper’s\ngrave.”\nTo the hill, then, I turned. I reached it. It remained now only to find\na hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden, if not\nsecure. But all the surface of the waste looked level. It showed no\nvariation but of tint: green, where rush and moss overgrew the marshes;\nblack, where the dry soil bore only heath. Dark as it was getting, I\ncould still see these changes, though but as mere alternations of light\nand shade; for colour had faded with the daylight.\nMy eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor-edge,\nvanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in\namong the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up. “That is an _ignis\nfatuus_,” was my first thought; and I expected it would soon vanish. It\nburnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing. “Is\nit, then, a bonfire just kindled?” I questioned. I watched to see\nwhether it would spread: but no; as it did not diminish, so it did not\nenlarge. “It may be a candle in a house,” I then conjectured; “but if\nso, I can never reach it. It is much too far away: and were it within a\nyard of me, what would it avail? I should but knock at the door to have\nit shut in my face.”\nAnd I sank down where I stood, and hid my face against the ground. I\nlay still a while: the night-wind swept over the hill and over me, and\ndied moaning in the distance; the rain fell fast, wetting me afresh to\nthe skin. Could I but have stiffened to the still frost—the friendly\nnumbness of death—it might have pelted on; I should not have felt it;\nbut my yet living flesh shuddered at its chilling influence. I rose ere\nlong.\nThe light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain. I\ntried to walk again: I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards it. It\nled me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog, which would have been\nimpassable in winter, and was splashy and shaking even now, in the\nheight of summer. Here I fell twice; but as often I rose and rallied my\nfaculties. This light was my forlorn hope: I must gain it.\nHaving crossed the marsh, I saw a trace of white over the moor. I\napproached it; it was a road or a track: it led straight up to the\nlight, which now beamed from a sort of knoll, amidst a clump of\ntrees—firs, apparently, from what I could distinguish of the character\nof their forms and foliage through the gloom. My star vanished as I\ndrew near: some obstacle had intervened between me and it. I put out my\nhand to feel the dark mass before me: I discriminated the rough stones\nof a low wall—above it, something like palisades, and within, a high\nand prickly hedge. I groped on. Again a whitish object gleamed before\nme: it was a gate—a wicket; it moved on its hinges as I touched it. On\neach side stood a sable bush—holly or yew.\nEntering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house\nrose to view, black, low, and rather long; but the guiding light shone\nnowhere. All was obscurity. Were the inmates retired to rest? I feared\nit must be so. In seeking the door, I turned an angle: there shot out\nthe friendly gleam again, from the lozenged panes of a very small\nlatticed window, within a foot of the ground, made still smaller by the\ngrowth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose leaves clustered\nthick over the portion of the house wall in which it was set. The\naperture was so screened and narrow, that curtain or shutter had been\ndeemed unnecessary; and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of\nfoliage shooting over it, I could see all within. I could see clearly a\nroom with a sanded floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with\npewter plates ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a\nglowing peat-fire. I could see a clock, a white deal table, some\nchairs. The candle, whose ray had been my beacon, burnt on the table;\nand by its light an elderly woman, somewhat rough-looking, but\nscrupulously clean, like all about her, was knitting a stocking.\nI noticed these objects cursorily only—in them there was nothing\nextraordinary. A group of more interest appeared near the hearth,\nsitting still amidst the rosy peace and warmth suffusing it. Two young,\ngraceful women—ladies in every point—sat, one in a low rocking-chair,\nthe other on a lower stool; both wore deep mourning of crape and\nbombazeen, which sombre garb singularly set off very fair necks and\nfaces: a large old pointer dog rested its massive head on the knee of\none girl—in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat.\nA strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants! Who were\nthey? They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the\ntable; for she looked like a rustic, and they were all delicacy and\ncultivation. I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs: and yet, as I\ngazed on them, I seemed intimate with every lineament. I cannot call\nthem handsome—they were too pale and grave for the word: as they each\nbent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost to severity. A stand\nbetween them supported a second candle and two great volumes, to which\nthey frequently referred, comparing them, seemingly, with the smaller\nbooks they held in their hands, like people consulting a dictionary to\naid them in the task of translation. This scene was as silent as if all\nthe figures had been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture: so\nhushed was it, I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock\ntick in its obscure corner; and I even fancied I could distinguish the\nclick-click of the woman’s knitting-needles. When, therefore, a voice\nbroke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me.\n“Listen, Diana,” said one of the absorbed students; “Franz and old\nDaniel are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream\nfrom which he has awakened in terror—listen!” And in a low voice she\nread something, of which not one word was intelligible to me; for it\nwas in an unknown tongue—neither French nor Latin. Whether it were\nGreek or German I could not tell.\n“That is strong,” she said, when she had finished: “I relish it.” The\nother girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated,\nwhile she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read. At a later\nday, I knew the language and the book; therefore, I will here quote the\nline: though, when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on\nsounding brass to me—conveying no meaning:—\n“‘Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.’ Good! good!”\nshe exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled. “There you have a\ndim and mighty archangel fitly set before you! The line is worth a\nhundred pages of fustian. ‘Ich wäge die Gedanken in der Schale meines\nZornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.’ I like it!”\nBoth were again silent.\n“Is there ony country where they talk i’ that way?” asked the old\nwoman, looking up from her knitting.\n“Yes, Hannah—a far larger country than England, where they talk in no\nother way.”\n“Well, for sure case, I knawn’t how they can understand t’ one t’other:\nand if either o’ ye went there, ye could tell what they said, I guess?”\n“We could probably tell something of what they said, but not all—for we\nare not as clever as you think us, Hannah. We don’t speak German, and\nwe cannot read it without a dictionary to help us.”\n“And what good does it do you?”\n“We mean to teach it some time—or at least the elements, as they say;\nand then we shall get more money than we do now.”\n“Varry like: but give ower studying; ye’ve done enough for to-night.”\n“I think we have: at least I’m tired. Mary, are you?”\n“Mortally: after all, it’s tough work fagging away at a language with\nno master but a lexicon.”\n“It is, especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious\nDeutsch. I wonder when St. John will come home.”\n“Surely he will not be long now: it is just ten (looking at a little\ngold watch she drew from her girdle). It rains fast, Hannah: will you\nhave the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?”\nThe woman rose: she opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage:\nsoon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room; she presently came back.\n“Ah, childer!” said she, “it fair troubles me to go into yond’ room\nnow: it looks so lonesome wi’ the chair empty and set back in a\ncorner.”\nShe wiped her eyes with her apron: the two girls, grave before, looked\nsad now.\n“But he is in a better place,” continued Hannah: “we shouldn’t wish him\nhere again. And then, nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had.”\n“You say he never mentioned us?” inquired one of the ladies.\n“He hadn’t time, bairn: he was gone in a minute, was your father. He\nhad been a bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify; and\nwhen Mr. St. John asked if he would like either o’ ye to be sent for,\nhe fair laughed at him. He began again with a bit of a heaviness in his\nhead the next day—that is, a fortnight sin’—and he went to sleep and\nniver wakened: he wor a’most stark when your brother went into t’\nchamber and fand him. Ah, childer! that’s t’ last o’ t’ old stock—for\nye and Mr. St. John is like of different soart to them ’at’s gone; for\nall your mother wor mich i’ your way, and a’most as book-learned. She\nwor the pictur’ o’ ye, Mary: Diana is more like your father.”\nI thought them so similar I could not tell where the old servant (for\nsuch I now concluded her to be) saw the difference. Both were fair\ncomplexioned and slenderly made; both possessed faces full of\ndistinction and intelligence. One, to be sure, had hair a shade darker\nthan the other, and there was a difference in their style of wearing\nit; Mary’s pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth: Diana’s\nduskier tresses covered her neck with thick curls. The clock struck\nten.\n“Ye’ll want your supper, I am sure,” observed Hannah; “and so will Mr.\nSt. John when he comes in.”\nAnd she proceeded to prepare the meal. The ladies rose; they seemed\nabout to withdraw to the parlour. Till this moment, I had been so\nintent on watching them, their appearance and conversation had excited\nin me so keen an interest, I had half-forgotten my own wretched\nposition: now it recurred to me. More desolate, more desperate than\never, it seemed from contrast. And how impossible did it appear to\ntouch the inmates of this house with concern on my behalf; to make them\nbelieve in the truth of my wants and woes—to induce them to vouchsafe a\nrest for my wanderings! As I groped out the door, and knocked at it\nhesitatingly, I felt that last idea to be a mere chimera. Hannah\nopened.\n“What do you want?” she inquired, in a voice of surprise, as she\nsurveyed me by the light of the candle she held.\n“May I speak to your mistresses?” I said.\n“You had better tell me what you have to say to them. Where do you come\nfrom?”\n“I am a stranger.”\n“What is your business here at this hour?”\n“I want a night’s shelter in an out-house or anywhere, and a morsel of\nbread to eat.”\nDistrust, the very feeling I dreaded, appeared in Hannah’s face. “I’ll\ngive you a piece of bread,” she said, after a pause; “but we can’t take\nin a vagrant to lodge. It isn’t likely.”\n“Do let me speak to your mistresses.”\n“No, not I. What can they do for you? You should not be roving about\nnow; it looks very ill.”\n“But where shall I go if you drive me away? What shall I do?”\n“Oh, I’ll warrant you know where to go and what to do. Mind you don’t\ndo wrong, that’s all. Here is a penny; now go—”\n“A penny cannot feed me, and I have no strength to go farther. Don’t\nshut the door:—oh, don’t, for God’s sake!”\n“I must; the rain is driving in—”\n“Tell the young ladies. Let me see them—”\n“Indeed, I will not. You are not what you ought to be, or you wouldn’t\nmake such a noise. Move off.”\n“But I must die if I am turned away.”\n“Not you. I’m fear’d you have some ill plans agate, that bring you\nabout folk’s houses at this time o’ night. If you’ve any\nfollowers—housebreakers or such like—anywhere near, you may tell them\nwe are not by ourselves in the house; we have a gentleman, and dogs,\nand guns.” Here the honest but inflexible servant clapped the door to\nand bolted it within.\nThis was the climax. A pang of exquisite suffering—a throe of true\ndespair—rent and heaved my heart. Worn out, indeed, I was; not another\nstep could I stir. I sank on the wet doorstep: I groaned—I wrung my\nhands—I wept in utter anguish. Oh, this spectre of death! Oh, this last\nhour, approaching in such horror! Alas, this isolation—this banishment\nfrom my kind! Not only the anchor of hope, but the footing of fortitude\nwas gone—at least for a moment; but the last I soon endeavoured to\nregain.\n“I can but die,” I said, “and I believe in God. Let me try to wait His\nwill in silence.”\nThese words I not only thought, but uttered; and thrusting back all my\nmisery into my heart, I made an effort to compel it to remain\nthere—dumb and still.\n“All men must die,” said a voice quite close at hand; “but all are not\ncondemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would\nbe if you perished here of want.”\n“Who or what speaks?” I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, and\nincapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid. A form was\nnear—what form, the pitch-dark night and my enfeebled vision prevented\nme from distinguishing. With a loud long knock, the new-comer appealed\nto the door.\n“Is it you, Mr. St. John?” cried Hannah.\n“Yes—yes; open quickly.”\n“Well, how wet and cold you must be, such a wild night as it is! Come\nin—your sisters are quite uneasy about you, and I believe there are bad\nfolks about. There has been a beggar-woman—I declare she is not gone\nyet!—laid down there. Get up! for shame! Move off, I say!”\n“Hush, Hannah! I have a word to say to the woman. You have done your\nduty in excluding, now let me do mine in admitting her. I was near, and\nlistened to both you and her. I think this is a peculiar case—I must at\nleast examine into it. Young woman, rise, and pass before me into the\nhouse.”\nHush, Hannah; I have a word to say to the woman\nWith difficulty I obeyed him. Presently I stood within that clean,\nbright kitchen—on the very hearth—trembling, sickening; conscious of an\naspect in the last degree ghastly, wild, and weather-beaten. The two\nladies, their brother, Mr. St. John, the old servant, were all gazing\nat me.\n“St. John, who is it?” I heard one ask.\n“I cannot tell: I found her at the door,” was the reply.\n“She does look white,” said Hannah.\n“As white as clay or death,” was responded. “She will fall: let her\nsit.”\nAnd indeed my head swam: I dropped, but a chair received me. I still\npossessed my senses, though just now I could not speak.\n“Perhaps a little water would restore her. Hannah, fetch some. But she\nis worn to nothing. How very thin, and how very bloodless!”\n“A mere spectre!”\n“Is she ill, or only famished?”\n“Famished, I think. Hannah, is that milk? Give it me, and a piece of\nbread.”\nDiana (I knew her by the long curls which I saw drooping between me and\nthe fire as she bent over me) broke some bread, dipped it in milk, and\nput it to my lips. Her face was near mine: I saw there was pity in it,\nand I felt sympathy in her hurried breathing. In her simple words, too,\nthe same balm-like emotion spoke: “Try to eat.”\n“Yes—try,” repeated Mary gently; and Mary’s hand removed my sodden\nbonnet and lifted my head. I tasted what they offered me: feebly at\nfirst, eagerly soon.\n“Not too much at first—restrain her,” said the brother; “she has had\nenough.” And he withdrew the cup of milk and the plate of bread.\n“A little more, St. John—look at the avidity in her eyes.”\n“No more at present, sister. Try if she can speak now—ask her her\nname.”\nI felt I could speak, and I answered—“My name is Jane Elliott.” Anxious\nas ever to avoid discovery, I had before resolved to assume an _alias_.\n“And where do you live? Where are your friends?”\nI was silent.\n“Can we send for any one you know?”\nI shook my head.\n“What account can you give of yourself?”\nSomehow, now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house, and\nonce was brought face to face with its owners, I felt no longer\noutcast, vagrant, and disowned by the wide world. I dared to put off\nthe mendicant—to resume my natural manner and character. I began once\nmore to know myself; and when Mr. St. John demanded an account—which at\npresent I was far too weak to render—I said after a brief pause—\n“Sir, I can give you no details to-night.”\n“But what, then,” said he, “do you expect me to do for you?”\n“Nothing,” I replied. My strength sufficed for but short answers. Diana\ntook the word—\n“Do you mean,” she asked, “that we have now given you what aid you\nrequire? and that we may dismiss you to the moor and the rainy night?”\nI looked at her. She had, I thought, a remarkable countenance, instinct\nboth with power and goodness. I took sudden courage. Answering her\ncompassionate gaze with a smile, I said—“I will trust you. If I were a\nmasterless and stray dog, I know that you would not turn me from your\nhearth to-night: as it is, I really have no fear. Do with me and for me\nas you like; but excuse me from much discourse—my breath is short—I\nfeel a spasm when I speak.” All three surveyed me, and all three were\nsilent.\n“Hannah,” said Mr. St. John, at last, “let her sit there at present,\nand ask her no questions; in ten minutes more, give her the remainder\nof that milk and bread. Mary and Diana, let us go into the parlour and\ntalk the matter over.”\nThey withdrew. Very soon one of the ladies returned—I could not tell\nwhich. A kind of pleasant stupor was stealing over me as I sat by the\ngenial fire. In an undertone she gave some directions to Hannah. Ere\nlong, with the servant’s aid, I contrived to mount a staircase; my\ndripping clothes were removed; soon a warm, dry bed received me. I\nthanked God—experienced amidst unutterable exhaustion a glow of\ngrateful joy—and slept.\n', 'The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is very\ndim in my mind. I can recall some sensations felt in that interval; but\nfew thoughts framed, and no actions performed. I knew I was in a small\nroom and in a narrow bed. To that bed I seemed to have grown; I lay on\nit motionless as a stone; and to have torn me from it would have been\nalmost to kill me. I took no note of the lapse of time—of the change\nfrom morning to noon, from noon to evening. I observed when any one\nentered or left the apartment: I could even tell who they were; I could\nunderstand what was said when the speaker stood near to me; but I could\nnot answer; to open my lips or move my limbs was equally impossible.\nHannah, the servant, was my most frequent visitor. Her coming disturbed\nme. I had a feeling that she wished me away: that she did not\nunderstand me or my circumstances; that she was prejudiced against me.\nDiana and Mary appeared in the chamber once or twice a day. They would\nwhisper sentences of this sort at my bedside—\n“It is very well we took her in.”\n“Yes; she would certainly have been found dead at the door in the\nmorning had she been left out all night. I wonder what she has gone\nthrough?”\n“Strange hardships, I imagine—poor, emaciated, pallid wanderer!”\n“She is not an uneducated person, I should think, by her manner of\nspeaking; her accent was quite pure; and the clothes she took off,\nthough splashed and wet, were little worn and fine.”\n“She has a peculiar face; fleshless and haggard as it is, I rather like\nit; and when in good health and animated, I can fancy her physiognomy\nwould be agreeable.”\nNever once in their dialogues did I hear a syllable of regret at the\nhospitality they had extended to me, or of suspicion of, or aversion\nto, myself. I was comforted.\nMr. St. John came but once: he looked at me, and said my state of\nlethargy was the result of reaction from excessive and protracted\nfatigue. He pronounced it needless to send for a doctor: nature, he was\nsure, would manage best, left to herself. He said every nerve had been\noverstrained in some way, and the whole system must sleep torpid a\nwhile. There was no disease. He imagined my recovery would be rapid\nenough when once commenced. These opinions he delivered in a few words,\nin a quiet, low voice; and added, after a pause, in the tone of a man\nlittle accustomed to expansive comment, “Rather an unusual physiognomy;\ncertainly, not indicative of vulgarity or degradation.”\n“Far otherwise,” responded Diana. “To speak truth, St. John, my heart\nrather warms to the poor little soul. I wish we may be able to benefit\nher permanently.”\n“That is hardly likely,” was the reply. “You will find she is some\nyoung lady who has had a misunderstanding with her friends, and has\nprobably injudiciously left them. We may, perhaps, succeed in restoring\nher to them, if she is not obstinate: but I trace lines of force in her\nface which make me sceptical of her tractability.” He stood considering\nme some minutes; then added, “She looks sensible, but not at all\nhandsome.”\n“She is so ill, St. John.”\n“Ill or well, she would always be plain. The grace and harmony of\nbeauty are quite wanting in those features.”\nOn the third day I was better; on the fourth, I could speak, move, rise\nin bed, and turn. Hannah had brought me some gruel and dry toast,\nabout, as I supposed, the dinner-hour. I had eaten with relish: the\nfood was good—void of the feverish flavour which had hitherto poisoned\nwhat I had swallowed. When she left me, I felt comparatively strong and\nrevived: ere long satiety of repose and desire for action stirred me. I\nwished to rise; but what could I put on? Only my damp and bemired\napparel; in which I had slept on the ground and fallen in the marsh. I\nfelt ashamed to appear before my benefactors so clad. I was spared the\nhumiliation.\nOn a chair by the bedside were all my own things, clean and dry. My\nblack silk frock hung against the wall. The traces of the bog were\nremoved from it; the creases left by the wet smoothed out: it was quite\ndecent. My very shoes and stockings were purified and rendered\npresentable. There were the means of washing in the room, and a comb\nand brush to smooth my hair. After a weary process, and resting every\nfive minutes, I succeeded in dressing myself. My clothes hung loose on\nme; for I was much wasted, but I covered deficiencies with a shawl, and\nonce more, clean and respectable looking—no speck of the dirt, no trace\nof the disorder I so hated, and which seemed so to degrade me, left—I\ncrept down a stone staircase with the aid of the banisters, to a narrow\nlow passage, and found my way presently to the kitchen.\nIt was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a generous\nfire. Hannah was baking. Prejudices, it is well known, are most\ndifficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been\nloosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds\namong stones. Hannah had been cold and stiff, indeed, at the first:\nlatterly she had begun to relent a little; and when she saw me come in\ntidy and well-dressed, she even smiled.\n“What, you have got up!” she said. “You are better, then. You may sit\nyou down in my chair on the hearthstone, if you will.”\nShe pointed to the rocking-chair: I took it. She bustled about,\nexamining me every now and then with the corner of her eye. Turning to\nme, as she took some loaves from the oven, she asked bluntly—\n“Did you ever go a-begging afore you came here?”\nI was indignant for a moment; but remembering that anger was out of the\nquestion, and that I had indeed appeared as a beggar to her, I answered\nquietly, but still not without a certain marked firmness—\n“You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar. I am no beggar; any more\nthan yourself or your young ladies.”\nAfter a pause she said, “I dunnut understand that: you’ve like no\nhouse, nor no brass, I guess?”\n“The want of house or brass (by which I suppose you mean money) does\nnot make a beggar in your sense of the word.”\n“Are you book-learned?” she inquired presently.\n“Yes, very.”\n“But you’ve never been to a boarding-school?”\n“I was at a boarding-school eight years.”\nShe opened her eyes wide. “Whatever cannot ye keep yourself for, then?”\n“I have kept myself; and, I trust, shall keep myself again. What are\nyou going to do with these gooseberries?” I inquired, as she brought\nout a basket of the fruit.\n“Mak’ ’em into pies.”\n“Give them to me and I’ll pick them.”\n“Nay; I dunnut want ye to do nought.”\n“But I must do something. Let me have them.”\nShe consented; and she even brought me a clean towel to spread over my\ndress, “lest,” as she said, “I should mucky it.”\n“Ye’ve not been used to sarvant’s wark, I see by your hands,” she\nremarked. “Happen ye’ve been a dressmaker?”\n“No, you are wrong. And now, never mind what I have been: don’t trouble\nyour head further about me; but tell me the name of the house where we\nare.”\n“Some calls it Marsh End, and some calls it Moor House.”\n“And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr. St. John?”\n“Nay; he doesn’t live here: he is only staying a while. When he is at\nhome, he is in his own parish at Morton.”\n“That village a few miles off?\n“Aye.”\n“And what is he?”\n“He is a parson.”\nI remembered the answer of the old housekeeper at the parsonage, when I\nhad asked to see the clergyman. “This, then, was his father’s\nresidence?”\n“Aye; old Mr. Rivers lived here, and his father, and grandfather, and\ngurt (great) grandfather afore him.”\n“The name, then, of that gentleman, is Mr. St. John Rivers?”\n“Aye; St. John is like his kirstened name.”\n“And his sisters are called Diana and Mary Rivers?”\n“Yes.”\n“Their father is dead?”\n“Dead three weeks sin’ of a stroke.”\n“They have no mother?”\n“The mistress has been dead this mony a year.”\n“Have you lived with the family long?”\n“I’ve lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three.”\n“That proves you must have been an honest and faithful servant. I will\nsay so much for you, though you have had the incivility to call me a\nbeggar.”\nShe again regarded me with a surprised stare. “I believe,” she said, “I\nwas quite mista’en in my thoughts of you: but there is so mony cheats\ngoes about, you mun forgie me.”\n“And though,” I continued, rather severely, “you wished to turn me from\nthe door, on a night when you should not have shut out a dog.”\n“Well, it was hard: but what can a body do? I thought more o’ th’\nchilder nor of mysel: poor things! They’ve like nobody to tak’ care on\n’em but me. I’m like to look sharpish.”\nI maintained a grave silence for some minutes.\n“You munnut think too hardly of me,” she again remarked.\n“But I do think hardly of you,” I said; “and I’ll tell you why—not so\nmuch because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an\nimpostor, as because you just now made it a species of reproach that I\nhad no ‘brass’ and no house. Some of the best people that ever lived\nhave been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought\nnot to consider poverty a crime.”\n“No more I ought,” said she: “Mr. St. John tells me so too; and I see I\nwor wrang—but I’ve clear a different notion on you now to what I had.\nYou look a raight down dacent little crater.”\n“That will do—I forgive you now. Shake hands.”\nShe put her floury and horny hand into mine; another and heartier smile\nillumined her rough face, and from that moment we were friends.\nHannah was evidently fond of talking. While I picked the fruit, and she\nmade the paste for the pies, she proceeded to give me sundry details\nabout her deceased master and mistress, and “the childer,” as she\ncalled the young people.\nOld Mr. Rivers, she said, was a plain man enough, but a gentleman, and\nof as ancient a family as could be found. Marsh End had belonged to the\nRivers ever since it was a house: and it was, she affirmed, “aboon two\nhundred year old—for all it looked but a small, humble place, naught to\ncompare wi’ Mr. Oliver’s grand hall down i’ Morton Vale. But she could\nremember Bill Oliver’s father a journeyman needlemaker; and th’ Rivers\nwor gentry i’ th’ owd days o’ th’ Henrys, as onybody might see by\nlooking into th’ registers i’ Morton Church vestry.” Still, she\nallowed, “the owd maister was like other folk—naught mich out o’ t’\ncommon way: stark mad o’ shooting, and farming, and sich like.” The\nmistress was different. She was a great reader, and studied a deal; and\nthe “bairns” had taken after her. There was nothing like them in these\nparts, nor ever had been; they had liked learning, all three, almost\nfrom the time they could speak; and they had always been “of a mak’ of\ntheir own.” Mr. St. John, when he grew up, would go to college and be a\nparson; and the girls, as soon as they left school, would seek places\nas governesses: for they had told her their father had some years ago\nlost a great deal of money by a man he had trusted turning bankrupt;\nand as he was now not rich enough to give them fortunes, they must\nprovide for themselves. They had lived very little at home for a long\nwhile, and were only come now to stay a few weeks on account of their\nfather’s death; but they did so like Marsh End and Morton, and all\nthese moors and hills about. They had been in London, and many other\ngrand towns; but they always said there was no place like home; and\nthen they were so agreeable with each other—never fell out nor\n“threaped.” She did not know where there was such a family for being\nunited.\nHaving finished my task of gooseberry picking, I asked where the two\nladies and their brother were now.\n“Gone over to Morton for a walk; but they would be back in half-an-hour\nto tea.”\nThey returned within the time Hannah had allotted them: they entered by\nthe kitchen door. Mr. St. John, when he saw me, merely bowed and passed\nthrough; the two ladies stopped: Mary, in a few words, kindly and\ncalmly expressed the pleasure she felt in seeing me well enough to be\nable to come down; Diana took my hand: she shook her head at me.\n“You should have waited for my leave to descend,” she said. “You still\nlook very pale—and so thin! Poor child!—poor girl!”\nDiana had a voice toned, to my ear, like the cooing of a dove. She\npossessed eyes whose gaze I delighted to encounter. Her whole face\nseemed to me full of charm. Mary’s countenance was equally\nintelligent—her features equally pretty; but her expression was more\nreserved, and her manners, though gentle, more distant. Diana looked\nand spoke with a certain authority: she had a will, evidently. It was\nmy nature to feel pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like\nhers, and to bend, where my conscience and self-respect permitted, to\nan active will.\n“And what business have you here?” she continued. “It is not your\nplace. Mary and I sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home we like\nto be free, even to license—but you are a visitor, and must go into the\nparlour.”\n“I am very well here.”\n“Not at all, with Hannah bustling about and covering you with flour.”\n“Besides, the fire is too hot for you,” interposed Mary.\n“To be sure,” added her sister. “Come, you must be obedient.” And still\nholding my hand she made me rise, and led me into the inner room.\n“Sit there,” she said, placing me on the sofa, “while we take our\nthings off and get the tea ready; it is another privilege we exercise\nin our little moorland home—to prepare our own meals when we are so\ninclined, or when Hannah is baking, brewing, washing, or ironing.”\nShe closed the door, leaving me solus with Mr. St. John, who sat\nopposite, a book or newspaper in his hand. I examined, first, the\nparlour, and then its occupant.\nThe parlour was rather a small room, very plainly furnished, yet\ncomfortable, because clean and neat. The old-fashioned chairs were very\nbright, and the walnut-wood table was like a looking-glass. A few\nstrange, antique portraits of the men and women of other days decorated\nthe stained walls; a cupboard with glass doors contained some books and\nan ancient set of china. There was no superfluous ornament in the\nroom—not one modern piece of furniture, save a brace of workboxes and a\nlady’s desk in rosewood, which stood on a side-table:\neverything—including the carpet and curtains—looked at once well worn\nand well saved.\nMr. St. John—sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on the\nwalls, keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips\nmutely sealed—was easy enough to examine. Had he been a statue instead\nof a man, he could not have been easier. He was young—perhaps from\ntwenty-eight to thirty—tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was\nlike a Greek face, very pure in outline: quite a straight, classic\nnose; quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom, indeed, an\nEnglish face comes so near the antique models as did his. He might well\nbe a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being\nso harmonious. His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his\nhigh forehead, colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by\ncareless locks of fair hair.\nThis is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom it\ndescribes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding,\nan impressible, or even of a placid nature. Quiescent as he now sat,\nthere was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to\nmy perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or\neager. He did not speak to me one word, nor even direct to me one\nglance, till his sisters returned. Diana, as she passed in and out, in\nthe course of preparing tea, brought me a little cake, baked on the top\nof the oven.\n“Eat that now,” she said: “you must be hungry. Hannah says you have had\nnothing but some gruel since breakfast.”\nI did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen. Mr. Rivers\nnow closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took a seat,\nfixed his blue pictorial-looking eyes full on me. There was an\nunceremonious directness, a searching, decided steadfastness in his\ngaze now, which told that intention, and not diffidence, had hitherto\nkept it averted from the stranger.\n“You are very hungry,” he said.\n“I am, sir.” It is my way—it always was my way, by instinct—ever to\nmeet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.\n“It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the\nlast three days: there would have been danger in yielding to the\ncravings of your appetite at first. Now you may eat, though still not\nimmoderately.”\n“I trust I shall not eat long at your expense, sir,” was my very\nclumsily-contrived, unpolished answer.\n“No,” he said coolly: “when you have indicated to us the residence of\nyour friends, we can write to them, and you may be restored to home.”\n“That, I must plainly tell you, is out of my power to do; being\nabsolutely without home and friends.”\nThe three looked at me, but not distrustfully; I felt there was no\nsuspicion in their glances: there was more of curiosity. I speak\nparticularly of the young ladies. St. John’s eyes, though clear enough\nin a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom. He\nseemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people’s\nthoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which combination of\nkeenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to embarrass than\nto encourage.\n“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that you are completely isolated from\nevery connection?”\n“I do. Not a tie links me to any living thing: not a claim do I possess\nto admittance under any roof in England.”\n“A most singular position at your age!”\nHere I saw his glance directed to my hands, which were folded on the\ntable before me. I wondered what he sought there: his words soon\nexplained the quest.\n“You have never been married? You are a spinster?”\nDiana laughed. “Why, she can’t be above seventeen or eighteen years\nold, St. John,” said she.\n“I am near nineteen: but I am not married. No.”\nI felt a burning glow mount to my face; for bitter and agitating\nrecollections were awakened by the allusion to marriage. They all saw\nthe embarrassment and the emotion. Diana and Mary relieved me by\nturning their eyes elsewhere than to my crimsoned visage; but the\ncolder and sterner brother continued to gaze, till the trouble he had\nexcited forced out tears as well as colour.\n“Where did you last reside?” he now asked.\n“You are too inquisitive, St. John,” murmured Mary in a low voice; but\nhe leaned over the table and required an answer by a second firm and\npiercing look.\n“The name of the place where, and of the person with whom I lived, is\nmy secret,” I replied concisely.\n“Which, if you like, you have, in my opinion, a right to keep, both\nfrom St. John and every other questioner,” remarked Diana.\n“Yet if I know nothing about you or your history, I cannot help you,”\nhe said. “And you need help, do you not?”\n“I need it, and I seek it so far, sir, that some true philanthropist\nwill put me in the way of getting work which I can do, and the\nremuneration for which will keep me, if but in the barest necessaries\nof life.”\n“I know not whether I am a true philanthropist; yet I am willing to aid\nyou to the utmost of my power in a purpose so honest. First, then, tell\nme what you have been accustomed to do, and what you _can_ do.”\nI had now swallowed my tea. I was mightily refreshed by the beverage;\nas much so as a giant with wine: it gave new tone to my unstrung\nnerves, and enabled me to address this penetrating young judge\nsteadily.\n“Mr. Rivers,” I said, turning to him, and looking at him, as he looked\nat me, openly and without diffidence, “you and your sisters have done\nme a great service—the greatest man can do his fellow-being; you have\nrescued me, by your noble hospitality, from death. This benefit\nconferred gives you an unlimited claim on my gratitude, and a claim, to\na certain extent, on my confidence. I will tell you as much of the\nhistory of the wanderer you have harboured, as I can tell without\ncompromising my own peace of mind—my own security, moral and physical,\nand that of others.\n“I am an orphan, the daughter of a clergyman. My parents died before I\ncould know them. I was brought up a dependent; educated in a charitable\ninstitution. I will even tell you the name of the establishment, where\nI passed six years as a pupil, and two as a teacher—Lowood Orphan\nAsylum, ——shire: you will have heard of it, Mr. Rivers?—the Rev. Robert\nBrocklehurst is the treasurer.”\n“I have heard of Mr. Brocklehurst, and I have seen the school.”\n“I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess. I\nobtained a good situation, and was happy. This place I was obliged to\nleave four days before I came here. The reason of my departure I cannot\nand ought not to explain: it would be useless, dangerous, and would\nsound incredible. No blame attached to me: I am as free from\nculpability as any one of you three. Miserable I am, and must be for a\ntime; for the catastrophe which drove me from a house I had found a\nparadise was of a strange and direful nature. I observed but two points\nin planning my departure—speed, secrecy: to secure these, I had to\nleave behind me everything I possessed except a small parcel; which, in\nmy hurry and trouble of mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that\nbrought me to Whitcross. To this neighbourhood, then, I came, quite\ndestitute. I slept two nights in the open air, and wandered about two\ndays without crossing a threshold: but twice in that space of time did\nI taste food; and it was when brought by hunger, exhaustion, and\ndespair almost to the last gasp, that you, Mr. Rivers, forbade me to\nperish of want at your door, and took me under the shelter of your\nroof. I know all your sisters have done for me since—for I have not\nbeen insensible during my seeming torpor—and I owe to their\nspontaneous, genuine, genial compassion as large a debt as to your\nevangelical charity.”\n“Don’t make her talk any more now, St. John,” said Diana, as I paused;\n“she is evidently not yet fit for excitement. Come to the sofa and sit\ndown now, Miss Elliott.”\nI gave an involuntary half start at hearing the _alias_: I had\nforgotten my new name. Mr. Rivers, whom nothing seemed to escape,\nnoticed it at once.\n“You said your name was Jane Elliott?” he observed.\n“I did say so; and it is the name by which I think it expedient to be\ncalled at present, but it is not my real name, and when I hear it, it\nsounds strange to me.”\n“Your real name you will not give?”\n“No: I fear discovery above all things; and whatever disclosure would\nlead to it, I avoid.”\n“You are quite right, I am sure,” said Diana. “Now do, brother, let her\nbe at peace a while.”\nBut when St. John had mused a few moments he recommenced as\nimperturbably and with as much acumen as ever.\n“You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality—you would\nwish, I see, to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters’ compassion,\nand, above all, with my _charity_ (I am quite sensible of the\ndistinction drawn, nor do I resent it—it is just): you desire to be\nindependent of us?”\n“I do: I have already said so. Show me how to work, or how to seek\nwork: that is all I now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the\nmeanest cottage; but till then, allow me to stay here: I dread another\nessay of the horrors of homeless destitution.”\n“Indeed you _shall_ stay here,” said Diana, putting her white hand on\nmy head. “You _shall_,” repeated Mary, in the tone of undemonstrative\nsincerity which seemed natural to her.\n“My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you,” said Mr. St.\nJohn, “as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a\nhalf-frozen bird some wintry wind might have driven through their\ncasement. _I_ feel more inclination to put you in the way of keeping\nyourself, and shall endeavour to do so; but observe, my sphere is\nnarrow. I am but the incumbent of a poor country parish: my aid must be\nof the humblest sort. And if you are inclined to despise the day of\nsmall things, seek some more efficient succour than such as I can\noffer.”\n“She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest she\n_can_ do,” answered Diana for me; “and you know, St. John, she has no\nchoice of helpers: she is forced to put up with such crusty people as\nyou.”\n“I will be a dressmaker; I will be a plain-workwoman; I will be a\nservant, a nurse-girl, if I can be no better,” I answered.\n“Right,” said Mr. St. John, quite coolly. “If such is your spirit, I\npromise to aid you, in my own time and way.”\nHe now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea. I\nsoon withdrew, for I had talked as much, and sat up as long, as my\npresent strength would permit.\n', 'The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them.\nIn a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all\nday, and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all\ntheir occupations; converse with them as much as they wished, and aid\nthem when and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure\nin this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time—the\npleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and\nprinciples.\nI liked to read what they liked to read: what they enjoyed, delighted\nme; what they approved, I reverenced. They loved their sequestered\nhome. I, too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low roof,\nits latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged\nfirs—all grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds; its garden,\ndark with yew and holly—and where no flowers but of the hardiest\nspecies would bloom—found a charm both potent and permanent. They clung\nto the purple moors behind and around their dwelling—to the hollow vale\ninto which the pebbly bridle-path leading from their gate descended,\nand which wound between fern-banks first, and then amongst a few of the\nwildest little pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath,\nor gave sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep, with their little\nmossy-faced lambs:—they clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect\nenthusiasm of attachment. I could comprehend the feeling, and share\nboth its strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality. I\nfelt the consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline\nof swell and sweep—on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell\nby moss, by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken,\nand mellow granite crag. These details were just to me what they were\nto them—so many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast\nand the soft breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of\nsunrise and sunset; the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for\nme, in these regions, the same attraction as for them—wound round my\nfaculties the same spell that entranced theirs.\nIndoors we agreed equally well. They were both more accomplished and\nbetter read than I was; but with eagerness I followed in the path of\nknowledge they had trodden before me. I devoured the books they lent\nme: then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in the evening\nwhat I had perused during the day. Thought fitted thought; opinion met\nopinion: we coincided, in short, perfectly.\nIf in our trio there was a superior and a leader, it was Diana.\nPhysically, she far excelled me: she was handsome; she was vigorous. In\nher animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty of\nflow, such as excited my wonder, while it baffled my comprehension. I\ncould talk a while when the evening commenced, but the first gush of\nvivacity and fluency gone, I was fain to sit on a stool at Diana’s\nfeet, to rest my head on her knee, and listen alternately to her and\nMary, while they sounded thoroughly the topic on which I had but\ntouched. Diana offered to teach me German. I liked to learn of her: I\nsaw the part of instructress pleased and suited her; that of scholar\npleased and suited me no less. Our natures dovetailed: mutual\naffection—of the strongest kind—was the result. They discovered I could\ndraw: their pencils and colour-boxes were immediately at my service. My\nskill, greater in this one point than theirs, surprised and charmed\nthem. Mary would sit and watch me by the hour together: then she would\ntake lessons; and a docile, intelligent, assiduous pupil she made. Thus\noccupied, and mutually entertained, days passed like hours, and weeks\nlike days.\nAs to Mr. St John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and\nrapidly between me and his sisters did not extend to him. One reason of\nthe distance yet observed between us was, that he was comparatively\nseldom at home: a large proportion of his time appeared devoted to\nvisiting the sick and poor among the scattered population of his\nparish.\nNo weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions: rain or\nfair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over, take his\nhat, and, followed by his father’s old pointer, Carlo, go out on his\nmission of love or duty—I scarcely know in which light he regarded it.\nSometimes, when the day was very unfavourable, his sisters would\nexpostulate. He would then say, with a peculiar smile, more solemn than\ncheerful—\n“And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from\nthese easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I\npropose to myself?”\nDiana and Mary’s general answer to this question was a sigh, and some\nminutes of apparently mournful meditation.\nBut besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to\nfriendship with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even\nof a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labours, blameless in\nhis life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental\nserenity, that inward content, which should be the reward of every\nsincere Christian and practical philanthropist. Often, of an evening,\nwhen he sat at the window, his desk and papers before him, he would\ncease reading or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver\nhimself up to I know not what course of thought; but that it was\nperturbed and exciting might be seen in the frequent flash and\nchangeful dilation of his eye.\nI think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight\nit was to his sisters. He expressed once, and but once in my hearing, a\nstrong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection\nfor the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home; but there was\nmore of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the\nsentiment was manifested; and never did he seem to roam the moors for\nthe sake of their soothing silence—never seek out or dwell upon the\nthousand peaceful delights they could yield.\nIncommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an\nopportunity of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its calibre\nwhen I heard him preach in his own church at Morton. I wish I could\ndescribe that sermon: but it is past my power. I cannot even render\nfaithfully the effect it produced on me.\nIt began calm—and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went,\nit was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal\nbreathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous\nlanguage. This grew to force—compressed, condensed, controlled. The\nheart was thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher:\nneither were softened. Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an\nabsence of consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic\ndoctrines—election, predestination, reprobation—were frequent; and each\nreference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom.\nWhen he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened\nby his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed\nto me—I know not whether equally so to others—that the eloquence to\nwhich I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid\ndregs of disappointment—where moved troubling impulses of insatiate\nyearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John\nRivers—pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was—had not yet found\nthat peace of God which passeth all understanding: he had no more found\nit, I thought, than had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my\nbroken idol and lost elysium—regrets to which I have latterly avoided\nreferring, but which possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly.\nMeantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor\nHouse, and return to the far different life and scene which awaited\nthem, as governesses in a large, fashionable, south-of-England city,\nwhere each held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty\nmembers they were regarded only as humble dependents, and who neither\nknew nor sought out their innate excellences, and appreciated only\ntheir acquired accomplishments as they appreciated the skill of their\ncook or the taste of their waiting-woman. Mr. St. John had said nothing\nto me yet about the employment he had promised to obtain for me; yet it\nbecame urgent that I should have a vocation of some kind. One morning,\nbeing left alone with him a few minutes in the parlour, I ventured to\napproach the window-recess—which his table, chair, and desk consecrated\nas a kind of study—and I was going to speak, though not very well\nknowing in what words to frame my inquiry—for it is at all times\ndifficult to break the ice of reserve glassing over such natures as\nhis—when he saved me the trouble by being the first to commence a\ndialogue.\nLooking up as I drew near—“You have a question to ask of me?” he said.\n“Yes; I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can offer\nmyself to undertake?”\n“I found or devised something for you three weeks ago; but as you\nseemed both useful and happy here—as my sisters had evidently become\nattached to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure—I deemed\nit inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till their\napproaching departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary.”\n“And they will go in three days now?” I said.\n“Yes; and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at Morton:\nHannah will accompany me; and this old house will be shut up.”\nI waited a few moments, expecting he would go on with the subject first\nbroached: but he seemed to have entered another train of reflection:\nhis look denoted abstraction from me and my business. I was obliged to\nrecall him to a theme which was of necessity one of close and anxious\ninterest to me.\n“What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Rivers? I hope this delay\nwill not have increased the difficulty of securing it.”\n“Oh, no; since it is an employment which depends only on me to give,\nand you to accept.”\nHe again paused: there seemed a reluctance to continue. I grew\nimpatient: a restless movement or two, and an eager and exacting glance\nfastened on his face, conveyed the feeling to him as effectually as\nwords could have done, and with less trouble.\n“You need be in no hurry to hear,” he said: “let me frankly tell you, I\nhave nothing eligible or profitable to suggest. Before I explain,\nrecall, if you please, my notice, clearly given, that if I helped you,\nit must be as the blind man would help the lame. I am poor; for I find\nthat, when I have paid my father’s debts, all the patrimony remaining\nto me will be this crumbling grange, the row of scathed firs behind,\nand the patch of moorish soil, with the yew-trees and holly-bushes in\nfront. I am obscure: Rivers is an old name; but of the three sole\ndescendants of the race, two earn the dependent’s crust among\nstrangers, and the third considers himself an alien from his native\ncountry—not only for life, but in death. Yes, and deems, and is bound\nto deem, himself honoured by the lot, and aspires but after the day\nwhen the cross of separation from fleshly ties shall be laid on his\nshoulders, and when the Head of that church-militant of whose humblest\nmembers he is one, shall give the word, ‘Rise, follow Me!’”\nSt. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with a quiet,\ndeep voice; with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating radiance of\nglance. He resumed—\n“And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service\nof poverty and obscurity. _You_ may even think it degrading—for I see\nnow your habits have been what the world calls refined: your tastes\nlean to the ideal, and your society has at least been amongst the\neducated; but _I_ consider that no service degrades which can better\nour race. I hold that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the\nChristian labourer’s task of tillage is appointed him—the scantier the\nmeed his toil brings—the higher the honour. His, under such\ncircumstances, is the destiny of the pioneer; and the first pioneers of\nthe Gospel were the Apostles—their captain was Jesus, the Redeemer,\nHimself.”\n“Well?” I said, as he again paused—“proceed.”\nHe looked at me before he proceeded: indeed, he seemed leisurely to\nread my face, as if its features and lines were characters on a page.\nThe conclusions drawn from this scrutiny he partially expressed in his\nsucceeding observations.\n“I believe you will accept the post I offer you,” said he, “and hold it\nfor a while: not permanently, though: any more than I could permanently\nkeep the narrow and narrowing—the tranquil, hidden office of English\ncountry incumbent; for in your nature is an alloy as detrimental to\nrepose as that in mine, though of a different kind.”\n“Do explain,” I urged, when he halted once more.\n“I will; and you shall hear how poor the proposal is,—how trivial—how\ncramping. I shall not stay long at Morton, now that my father is dead,\nand that I am my own master. I shall leave the place probably in the\ncourse of a twelve-month; but while I do stay, I will exert myself to\nthe utmost for its improvement. Morton, when I came to it two years\nago, had no school: the children of the poor were excluded from every\nhope of progress. I established one for boys: I mean now to open a\nsecond school for girls. I have hired a building for the purpose, with\na cottage of two rooms attached to it for the mistress’s house. Her\nsalary will be thirty pounds a year: her house is already furnished,\nvery simply, but sufficiently, by the kindness of a lady, Miss Oliver;\nthe only daughter of the sole rich man in my parish—Mr. Oliver, the\nproprietor of a needle-factory and iron-foundry in the valley. The same\nlady pays for the education and clothing of an orphan from the\nworkhouse, on condition that she shall aid the mistress in such menial\noffices connected with her own house and the school as her occupation\nof teaching will prevent her having time to discharge in person. Will\nyou be this mistress?”\nHe put the question rather hurriedly; he seemed half to expect an\nindignant, or at least a disdainful rejection of the offer: not knowing\nall my thoughts and feelings, though guessing some, he could not tell\nin what light the lot would appear to me. In truth it was humble—but\nthen it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum: it was plodding—but\nthen, compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was\nindependent; and the fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul\nlike iron: it was not ignoble—not unworthy—not mentally degrading, I\nmade my decision.\n“I thank you for the proposal, Mr. Rivers, and I accept it with all my\nheart.”\n“But you comprehend me?” he said. “It is a village school: your\nscholars will be only poor girls—cottagers’ children—at the best,\nfarmers’ daughters. Knitting, sewing, reading, writing, ciphering, will\nbe all you will have to teach. What will you do with your\naccomplishments? What, with the largest portion of your\nmind—sentiments—tastes?”\n“Save them till they are wanted. They will keep.”\n“You know what you undertake, then?”\n“I do.”\nHe now smiled: and not a bitter or a sad smile, but one well pleased\nand deeply gratified.\n“And when will you commence the exercise of your function?”\n“I will go to my house to-morrow, and open the school, if you like,\nnext week.”\n“Very well: so be it.”\nHe rose and walked through the room. Standing still, he again looked at\nme. He shook his head.\n“What do you disapprove of, Mr. Rivers?” I asked.\n“You will not stay at Morton long: no, no!”\n“Why? What is your reason for saying so?”\n“I read it in your eye; it is not of that description which promises\nthe maintenance of an even tenor in life.”\n“I am not ambitious.”\nHe started at the word “ambitious.” He repeated, “No. What made you\nthink of ambition? Who is ambitious? I know I am: but how did you find\nit out?”\n“I was speaking of myself.”\n“Well, if you are not ambitious, you are—” He paused.\n“What?”\n“I was going to say, impassioned: but perhaps you would have\nmisunderstood the word, and been displeased. I mean, that human\naffections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you. I am sure\nyou cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, and to\ndevote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly void of\nstimulus: any more than I can be content,” he added, with emphasis, “to\nlive here buried in morass, pent in with mountains—my nature, that God\ngave me, contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed, paralysed—made\nuseless. You hear now how I contradict myself. I, who preached\ncontentment with a humble lot, and justified the vocation even of\nhewers of wood and drawers of water in God’s service—I, His ordained\nminister, almost rave in my restlessness. Well, propensities and\nprinciples must be reconciled by some means.”\nHe left the room. In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than in\nthe whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me.\nDiana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day approached\nfor leaving their brother and their home. They both tried to appear as\nusual; but the sorrow they had to struggle against was one that could\nnot be entirely conquered or concealed. Diana intimated that this would\nbe a different parting from any they had ever yet known. It would\nprobably, as far as St. John was concerned, be a parting for years: it\nmight be a parting for life.\n“He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves,” she said: “natural\naffection and feelings more potent still. St. John looks quiet, Jane;\nbut he hides a fever in his vitals. You would think him gentle, yet in\nsome things he is inexorable as death; and the worst of it is, my\nconscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his severe\ndecision: certainly, I cannot for a moment blame him for it. It is\nright, noble, Christian: yet it breaks my heart!” And the tears gushed\nto her fine eyes. Mary bent her head low over her work.\n“We are now without father: we shall soon be without home and brother,”\nshe murmured.\nAt that moment a little accident supervened, which seemed decreed by\nfate purposely to prove the truth of the adage, that “misfortunes never\ncome singly,” and to add to their distresses the vexing one of the slip\nbetween the cup and the lip. St. John passed the window reading a\nletter. He entered.\n“Our uncle John is dead,” said he.\nBoth the sisters seemed struck: not shocked or appalled; the tidings\nappeared in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting.\n“Dead?” repeated Diana.\n“Yes.”\nShe riveted a searching gaze on her brother’s face. “And what then?”\nshe demanded, in a low voice.\n“What then, Die?” he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of\nfeature. “What then? Why—nothing. Read.”\nHe threw the letter into her lap. She glanced over it, and handed it to\nMary. Mary perused it in silence, and returned it to her brother. All\nthree looked at each other, and all three smiled—a dreary, pensive\nsmile enough.\n“Amen! We can yet live,” said Diana at last.\n“At any rate, it makes us no worse off than we were before,” remarked\nMary.\n“Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what _might\nhave been_,” said Mr. Rivers, “and contrasts it somewhat too vividly\nwith what _is_.”\nHe folded the letter, locked it in his desk, and again went out.\nFor some minutes no one spoke. Diana then turned to me.\n“Jane, you will wonder at us and our mysteries,” she said, “and think\nus hard-hearted beings not to be more moved at the death of so near a\nrelation as an uncle; but we have never seen him or known him. He was\nmy mother’s brother. My father and he quarrelled long ago. It was by\nhis advice that my father risked most of his property in the\nspeculation that ruined him. Mutual recrimination passed between them:\nthey parted in anger, and were never reconciled. My uncle engaged\nafterwards in more prosperous undertakings: it appears he realised a\nfortune of twenty thousand pounds. He was never married, and had no\nnear kindred but ourselves and one other person, not more closely\nrelated than we. My father always cherished the idea that he would\natone for his error by leaving his possessions to us; that letter\ninforms us that he has bequeathed every penny to the other relation,\nwith the exception of thirty guineas, to be divided between St. John,\nDiana, and Mary Rivers, for the purchase of three mourning rings. He\nhad a right, of course, to do as he pleased: and yet a momentary damp\nis cast on the spirits by the receipt of such news. Mary and I would\nhave esteemed ourselves rich with a thousand pounds each; and to St.\nJohn such a sum would have been valuable, for the good it would have\nenabled him to do.”\nThis explanation given, the subject was dropped, and no further\nreference made to it by either Mr. Rivers or his sisters. The next day\nI left Marsh End for Morton. The day after, Diana and Mary quitted it\nfor distant B——. In a week, Mr. Rivers and Hannah repaired to the\nparsonage: and so the old grange was abandoned.\n', 'My home, then, when I at last find a home,—is a cottage; a little room\nwith whitewashed walls and a sanded floor, containing four painted\nchairs and a table, a clock, a cupboard, with two or three plates and\ndishes, and a set of tea-things in delf. Above, a chamber of the same\ndimensions as the kitchen, with a deal bedstead and chest of drawers;\nsmall, yet too large to be filled with my scanty wardrobe: though the\nkindness of my gentle and generous friends has increased that, by a\nmodest stock of such things as are necessary.\nIt is evening. I have dismissed, with the fee of an orange, the little\norphan who serves me as a handmaid. I am sitting alone on the hearth.\nThis morning, the village school opened. I had twenty scholars. But\nthree of the number can read: none write or cipher. Several knit, and a\nfew sew a little. They speak with the broadest accent of the district.\nAt present, they and I have a difficulty in understanding each other’s\nlanguage. Some of them are unmannered, rough, intractable, as well as\nignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to learn, and evince a\ndisposition that pleases me. I must not forget that these coarsely-clad\nlittle peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of\ngentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence,\nrefinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their\nhearts as in those of the best-born. My duty will be to develop these\ngerms: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office.\nMuch enjoyment I do not expect in the life opening before me: yet it\nwill, doubtless, if I regulate my mind, and exert my powers as I ought,\nyield me enough to live on from day to day.\nWas I very gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed in\nyonder bare, humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon? Not to\ndeceive myself, I must reply—No: I felt desolate to a degree. I\nfelt—yes, idiot that I am—I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a step\nwhich sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I\nwas weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of\nall I heard and saw round me. But let me not hate and despise myself\ntoo much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong—that is a great\nstep gained; I shall strive to overcome them. To-morrow, I trust, I\nshall get the better of them partially; and in a few weeks, perhaps,\nthey will be quite subdued. In a few months, it is possible, the\nhappiness of seeing progress, and a change for the better in my\nscholars may substitute gratification for disgust.\nMeantime, let me ask myself one question—Which is better?—To have\nsurrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful\neffort—no struggle;—but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen\nasleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst\nthe luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France,\nMr. Rochester’s mistress; delirious with his love half my time—for he\nwould—oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He _did_ love\nme—no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet\nhomage given to beauty, youth, and grace—for never to any one else\nshall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me—it is\nwhat no man besides will ever be.—But where am I wandering, and what am\nI saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a\nslave in a fool’s paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss\none hour—suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the\nnext—or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy\nmountain nook in the healthy heart of England?\nYes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law,\nand scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God\ndirected me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the\nguidance!\nHaving brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went to my\ndoor, and looked at the sunset of the harvest-day, and at the quiet\nfields before my cottage, which, with the school, was distant half a\nmile from the village. The birds were singing their last strains—\n“The air was mild, the dew was balm.”\nWhile I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find\nmyself ere long weeping—and why? For the doom which had reft me from\nadhesion to my master: for him I was no more to see; for the desperate\ngrief and fatal fury—consequences of my departure—which might now,\nperhaps, be dragging him from the path of right, too far to leave hope\nof ultimate restoration thither. At this thought, I turned my face\naside from the lovely sky of eve and lonely vale of Morton—I say\n_lonely_, for in that bend of it visible to me there was no building\napparent save the church and the parsonage, half-hid in trees, and,\nquite at the extremity, the roof of Vale Hall, where the rich Mr.\nOliver and his daughter lived. I hid my eyes, and leant my head against\nthe stone frame of my door; but soon a slight noise near the wicket\nwhich shut in my tiny garden from the meadow beyond it made me look up.\nA dog—old Carlo, Mr. Rivers’ pointer, as I saw in a moment—was pushing\nthe gate with his nose, and St. John himself leant upon it with folded\narms; his brow knit, his gaze, grave almost to displeasure, fixed on\nme. I asked him to come in.\n“No, I cannot stay; I have only brought you a little parcel my sisters\nleft for you. I think it contains a colour-box, pencils, and paper.”\nI approached to take it: a welcome gift it was. He examined my face, I\nthought, with austerity, as I came near: the traces of tears were\ndoubtless very visible upon it.\n“Have you found your first day’s work harder than you expected?” he\nasked.\n“Oh, no! On the contrary, I think in time I shall get on with my\nscholars very well.”\n“But perhaps your accommodations—your cottage—your furniture—have\ndisappointed your expectations? They are, in truth, scanty enough;\nbut—” I interrupted—\n“My cottage is clean and weather-proof; my furniture sufficient and\ncommodious. All I see has made me thankful, not despondent. I am not\nabsolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the absence of a\ncarpet, a sofa, and silver plate; besides, five weeks ago I had\nnothing—I was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant; now I have acquaintance,\na home, a business. I wonder at the goodness of God; the generosity of\nmy friends; the bounty of my lot. I do not repine.”\n“But you feel solitude an oppression? The little house there behind you\nis dark and empty.”\n“I have hardly had time yet to enjoy a sense of tranquillity, much less\nto grow impatient under one of loneliness.”\n“Very well; I hope you feel the content you express: at any rate, your\ngood sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to the\nvacillating fears of Lot’s wife. What you had left before I saw you, of\ncourse I do not know; but I counsel you to resist firmly every\ntemptation which would incline you to look back: pursue your present\ncareer steadily, for some months at least.”\n“It is what I mean to do,” I answered. St. John continued—\n“It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the\nbent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God\nhas given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and when\nour energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get—when our will\nstrains after a path we may not follow—we need neither starve from\ninanition, nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek another\nnourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden food it longed to\ntaste—and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road\nas direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if\nrougher than it.\n“A year ago I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I had\nmade a mistake in entering the ministry: its uniform duties wearied me\nto death. I burnt for the more active life of the world—for the more\nexciting toils of a literary career—for the destiny of an artist,\nauthor, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes, the heart\nof a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown,\na luster after power, beat under my curate’s surplice. I considered; my\nlife was so wretched, it must be changed, or I must die. After a season\nof darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped\nexistence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds—my powers\nheard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread\ntheir wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me; to bear\nwhich afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and\neloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator,\nwere all needed: for these all centre in the good missionary.\n“A missionary I resolved to be. From that moment my state of mind\nchanged; the fetters dissolved and dropped from every faculty, leaving\nnothing of bondage but its galling soreness—which time only can heal.\nMy father, indeed, imposed the determination, but since his death, I\nhave not a legitimate obstacle to contend with; some affairs settled, a\nsuccessor for Morton provided, an entanglement or two of the feelings\nbroken through or cut asunder—a last conflict with human weakness, in\nwhich I know I shall overcome, because I have vowed that I _will_\novercome—and I leave Europe for the East.”\nHe said this, in his peculiar, subdued, yet emphatic voice; looking,\nwhen he had ceased speaking, not at me, but at the setting sun, at\nwhich I looked too. Both he and I had our backs towards the path\nleading up the field to the wicket. We had heard no step on that\ngrass-grown track; the water running in the vale was the one lulling\nsound of the hour and scene; we might well then start when a gay voice,\nsweet as a silver bell, exclaimed—\n“Good evening, Mr. Rivers. And good evening, old Carlo. Your dog is\nquicker to recognise his friends than you are, sir; he pricked his ears\nand wagged his tail when I was at the bottom of the field, and you have\nyour back towards me now.”\nIt was true. Though Mr. Rivers had started at the first of those\nmusical accents, as if a thunderbolt had split a cloud over his head,\nhe stood yet, at the close of the sentence, in the same attitude in\nwhich the speaker had surprised him—his arm resting on the gate, his\nface directed towards the west. He turned at last, with measured\ndeliberation. A vision, as it seemed to me, had risen at his side.\nThere appeared, within three feet of him, a form clad in pure white—a\nyouthful, graceful form: full, yet fine in contour; and when, after\nbending to caress Carlo, it lifted up its head, and threw back a long\nveil, there bloomed under his glance a face of perfect beauty. Perfect\nbeauty is a strong expression; but I do not retrace or qualify it: as\nsweet features as ever the temperate clime of Albion moulded; as pure\nhues of rose and lily as ever her humid gales and vapoury skies\ngenerated and screened, justified, in this instance, the term. No charm\nwas wanting, no defect was perceptible; the young girl had regular and\ndelicate lineaments; eyes shaped and coloured as we see them in lovely\npictures, large, and dark, and full; the long and shadowy eyelash which\nencircles a fine eye with so soft a fascination; the pencilled brow\nwhich gives such clearness; the white smooth forehead, which adds such\nrepose to the livelier beauties of tint and ray; the cheek oval, fresh,\nand smooth; the lips, fresh too, ruddy, healthy, sweetly formed; the\neven and gleaming teeth without flaw; the small dimpled chin; the\nornament of rich, plenteous tresses—all advantages, in short, which,\ncombined, realise the ideal of beauty, were fully hers. I wondered, as\nI looked at this fair creature: I admired her with my whole heart.\nNature had surely formed her in a partial mood; and, forgetting her\nusual stinted step-mother dole of gifts, had endowed this, her darling,\nwith a grand-dame’s bounty.\nWhat did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel? I naturally asked\nmyself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her; and, as\nnaturally, I sought the answer to the inquiry in his countenance. He\nhad already withdrawn his eye from the Peri, and was looking at a\nhumble tuft of daisies which grew by the wicket.\n“A lovely evening, but late for you to be out alone,” he said, as he\ncrushed the snowy heads of the closed flowers with his foot.\n“Oh, I only came home from S——” (she mentioned the name of a large town\nsome twenty miles distant) “this afternoon. Papa told me you had opened\nyour school, and that the new mistress was come; and so I put on my\nbonnet after tea, and ran up the valley to see her: this is she?”\npointing to me.\n“It is,” said St. John.\n“Do you think you shall like Morton?” she asked of me, with a direct\nand naïve simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if child-like.\n“I hope I shall. I have many inducements to do so.”\n“Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected?”\n“Quite.”\n“Do you like your house?”\n“Very much.”\n“Have I furnished it nicely?”\n“Very nicely, indeed.”\n“And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood?”\n“You have indeed. She is teachable and handy.” (This then, I thought,\nis Miss Oliver, the heiress; favoured, it seems, in the gifts of\nfortune, as well as in those of nature! What happy combination of the\nplanets presided over her birth, I wonder?)\n“I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes,” she added. “It will\nbe a change for me to visit you now and then; and I like a change. Mr.\nRivers, I have been _so_ gay during my stay at S——. Last night, or\nrather this morning, I was dancing till two o’clock. The ——th regiment\nare stationed there since the riots; and the officers are the most\nagreeable men in the world: they put all our young knife-grinders and\nscissor merchants to shame.”\nIt seemed to me that Mr. St. John’s under lip protruded, and his upper\nlip curled a moment. His mouth certainly looked a good deal compressed,\nand the lower part of his face unusually stern and square, as the\nlaughing girl gave him this information. He lifted his gaze, too, from\nthe daisies, and turned it on her. An unsmiling, a searching, a meaning\ngaze it was. She answered it with a second laugh, and laughter well\nbecame her youth, her roses, her dimples, her bright eyes.\nAs he stood, mute and grave, she again fell to caressing Carlo. “Poor\nCarlo loves me,” said she. “_He_ is not stern and distant to his\nfriends; and if he could speak, he would not be silent.”\nAs she patted the dog’s head, bending with native grace before his\nyoung and austere master, I saw a glow rise to that master’s face. I\nsaw his solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless\nemotion. Flushed and kindled thus, he looked nearly as beautiful for a\nman as she for a woman. His chest heaved once, as if his large heart,\nweary of despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and\nmade a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty. But he curbed it,\nI think, as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed. He responded\nneither by word nor movement to the gentle advances made him.\n“Papa says you never come to see us now,” continued Miss Oliver,\nlooking up. “You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall. He is alone this\nevening, and not very well: will you return with me and visit him?”\n“It is not a seasonable hour to intrude on Mr. Oliver,” answered St.\nJohn.\n“Not a seasonable hour! But I declare it is. It is just the hour when\npapa most wants company: when the works are closed and he has no\nbusiness to occupy him. Now, Mr. Rivers, _do_ come. Why are you so very\nshy, and so very sombre?” She filled up the hiatus his silence left by\na reply of her own.\n“I forgot!” she exclaimed, shaking her beautiful curled head, as if\nshocked at herself. “I am so giddy and thoughtless! _Do_ excuse me. It\nhad slipped my memory that you have good reasons to be indisposed for\njoining in my chatter. Diana and Mary have left you, and Moor House is\nshut up, and you are so lonely. I am sure I pity you. Do come and see\npapa.”\n“Not to-night, Miss Rosamond, not to-night.”\nMr. St. John spoke almost like an automaton: himself only knew the\neffort it cost him thus to refuse.\n“Well, if you are so obstinate, I will leave you; for I dare not stay\nany longer: the dew begins to fall. Good evening!”\nShe held out her hand. He just touched it. “Good evening!” he repeated,\nin a voice low and hollow as an echo. She turned, but in a moment\nreturned.\n“Are you well?” she asked. Well might she put the question: his face\nwas blanched as her gown.\n“Quite well,” he enunciated; and, with a bow, he left the gate. She\nwent one way; he another. She turned twice to gaze after him as she\ntripped fairy-like down the field; he, as he strode firmly across,\nnever turned at all.\nThis spectacle of another’s suffering and sacrifice rapt my thoughts\nfrom exclusive meditation on my own. Diana Rivers had designated her\nbrother “inexorable as death.” She had not exaggerated.\n', 'I continued the labours of the village-school as actively and\nfaithfully as I could. It was truly hard work at first. Some time\nelapsed before, with all my efforts, I could comprehend my scholars and\ntheir nature. Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid, they seemed\nto me hopelessly dull; and, at first sight, all dull alike: but I soon\nfound I was mistaken. There was a difference amongst them as amongst\nthe educated; and when I got to know them, and they me, this difference\nrapidly developed itself. Their amazement at me, my language, my rules,\nand ways, once subsided, I found some of these heavy-looking, gaping\nrustics wake up into sharp-witted girls enough. Many showed themselves\nobliging, and amiable too; and I discovered amongst them not a few\nexamples of natural politeness, and innate self-respect, as well as of\nexcellent capacity, that won both my goodwill and my admiration. These\nsoon took a pleasure in doing their work well, in keeping their persons\nneat, in learning their tasks regularly, in acquiring quiet and orderly\nmanners. The rapidity of their progress, in some instances, was even\nsurprising; and an honest and happy pride I took in it: besides, I\nbegan personally to like some of the best girls; and they liked me. I\nhad amongst my scholars several farmers’ daughters: young women grown,\nalmost. These could already read, write, and sew; and to them I taught\nthe elements of grammar, geography, history, and the finer kinds of\nneedlework. I found estimable characters amongst them—characters\ndesirous of information and disposed for improvement—with whom I passed\nmany a pleasant evening hour in their own homes. Their parents then\n(the farmer and his wife) loaded me with attentions. There was an\nenjoyment in accepting their simple kindness, and in repaying it by a\nconsideration—a scrupulous regard to their feelings—to which they were\nnot, perhaps, at all times accustomed, and which both charmed and\nbenefited them; because, while it elevated them in their own eyes, it\nmade them emulous to merit the deferential treatment they received.\nI felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went out,\nI heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with\nfriendly smiles. To live amidst general regard, though it be but the\nregard of working people, is like “sitting in sunshine, calm and\nsweet;” serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray. At this\nperiod of my life, my heart far oftener swelled with thankfulness than\nsank with dejection: and yet, reader, to tell you all, in the midst of\nthis calm, this useful existence—after a day passed in honourable\nexertion amongst my scholars, an evening spent in drawing or reading\ncontentedly alone—I used to rush into strange dreams at night: dreams\nmany-coloured, agitated, full of the ideal, the stirring, the\nstormy—dreams where, amidst unusual scenes, charged with adventure,\nwith agitating risk and romantic chance, I still again and again met\nMr. Rochester, always at some exciting crisis; and then the sense of\nbeing in his arms, hearing his voice, meeting his eye, touching his\nhand and cheek, loving him, being loved by him—the hope of passing a\nlifetime at his side, would be renewed, with all its first force and\nfire. Then I awoke. Then I recalled where I was, and how situated. Then\nI rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering; and then the\nstill, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and heard the\nburst of passion. By nine o’clock the next morning I was punctually\nopening the school; tranquil, settled, prepared for the steady duties\nof the day.\nRosamond Oliver kept her word in coming to visit me. Her call at the\nschool was generally made in the course of her morning ride. She would\ncanter up to the door on her pony, followed by a mounted livery\nservant. Anything more exquisite than her appearance, in her purple\nhabit, with her Amazon’s cap of black velvet placed gracefully above\nthe long curls that kissed her cheek and floated to her shoulders, can\nscarcely be imagined: and it was thus she would enter the rustic\nbuilding, and glide through the dazzled ranks of the village children.\nShe generally came at the hour when Mr. Rivers was engaged in giving\nhis daily catechising lesson. Keenly, I fear, did the eye of the\nvisitress pierce the young pastor’s heart. A sort of instinct seemed to\nwarn him of her entrance, even when he did not see it; and when he was\nlooking quite away from the door, if she appeared at it, his cheek\nwould glow, and his marble-seeming features, though they refused to\nrelax, changed indescribably, and in their very quiescence became\nexpressive of a repressed fervour, stronger than working muscle or\ndarting glance could indicate.\nOf course, she knew her power: indeed, he did not, because he could\nnot, conceal it from her. In spite of his Christian stoicism, when she\nwent up and addressed him, and smiled gaily, encouragingly, even fondly\nin his face, his hand would tremble and his eye burn. He seemed to say,\nwith his sad and resolute look, if he did not say it with his lips, “I\nlove you, and I know you prefer me. It is not despair of success that\nkeeps me dumb. If I offered my heart, I believe you would accept it.\nBut that heart is already laid on a sacred altar: the fire is arranged\nround it. It will soon be no more than a sacrifice consumed.”\nAnd then she would pout like a disappointed child; a pensive cloud\nwould soften her radiant vivacity; she would withdraw her hand hastily\nfrom his, and turn in transient petulance from his aspect, at once so\nheroic and so martyr-like. St. John, no doubt, would have given the\nworld to follow, recall, retain her, when she thus left him; but he\nwould not give one chance of heaven, nor relinquish, for the elysium of\nher love, one hope of the true, eternal Paradise. Besides, he could not\nbind all that he had in his nature—the rover, the aspirant, the poet,\nthe priest—in the limits of a single passion. He could not—he would\nnot—renounce his wild field of mission warfare for the parlours and the\npeace of Vale Hall. I learnt so much from himself in an inroad I once,\ndespite his reserve, had the daring to make on his confidence.\nMiss Oliver already honoured me with frequent visits to my cottage. I\nhad learnt her whole character, which was without mystery or disguise:\nshe was coquettish but not heartless; exacting, but not worthlessly\nselfish. She had been indulged from her birth, but was not absolutely\nspoilt. She was hasty, but good-humoured; vain (she could not help it,\nwhen every glance in the glass showed her such a flush of loveliness),\nbut not affected; liberal-handed; innocent of the pride of wealth;\ningenuous; sufficiently intelligent; gay, lively, and unthinking: she\nwas very charming, in short, even to a cool observer of her own sex\nlike me; but she was not profoundly interesting or thoroughly\nimpressive. A very different sort of mind was hers from that, for\ninstance, of the sisters of St. John. Still, I liked her almost as I\nliked my pupil Adèle; except that, for a child whom we have watched\nover and taught, a closer affection is engendered than we can give an\nequally attractive adult acquaintance.\nShe had taken an amiable caprice to me. She said I was like Mr. Rivers,\nonly, certainly, she allowed, “not one-tenth so handsome, though I was\na nice neat little soul enough, but he was an angel.” I was, however,\ngood, clever, composed, and firm, like him. I was a _lusus naturæ_, she\naffirmed, as a village schoolmistress: she was sure my previous\nhistory, if known, would make a delightful romance.\nOne evening, while, with her usual child-like activity, and thoughtless\nyet not offensive inquisitiveness, she was rummaging the cupboard and\nthe table-drawer of my little kitchen, she discovered first two French\nbooks, a volume of Schiller, a German grammar and dictionary, and then\nmy drawing-materials and some sketches, including a pencil-head of a\npretty little cherub-like girl, one of my scholars, and sundry views\nfrom nature, taken in the Vale of Morton and on the surrounding moors.\nShe was first transfixed with surprise, and then electrified with\ndelight.\n“Had I done these pictures? Did I know French and German? What a\nlove—what a miracle I was! I drew better than her master in the first\nschool in S——. Would I sketch a portrait of her, to show to papa?”\n“With pleasure,” I replied; and I felt a thrill of artist-delight at\nthe idea of copying from so perfect and radiant a model. She had then\non a dark-blue silk dress; her arms and her neck were bare; her only\nornament was her chestnut tresses, which waved over her shoulders with\nall the wild grace of natural curls. I took a sheet of fine card-board,\nand drew a careful outline. I promised myself the pleasure of colouring\nit; and, as it was getting late then, I told her she must come and sit\nanother day.\nShe made such a report of me to her father, that Mr. Oliver himself\naccompanied her next evening—a tall, massive-featured, middle-aged, and\ngrey-headed man, at whose side his lovely daughter looked like a bright\nflower near a hoary turret. He appeared a taciturn, and perhaps a proud\npersonage; but he was very kind to me. The sketch of Rosamond’s\nportrait pleased him highly: he said I must make a finished picture of\nit. He insisted, too, on my coming the next day to spend the evening at\nVale Hall.\nI went. I found it a large, handsome residence, showing abundant\nevidences of wealth in the proprietor. Rosamond was full of glee and\npleasure all the time I stayed. Her father was affable; and when he\nentered into conversation with me after tea, he expressed in strong\nterms his approbation of what I had done in Morton school, and said he\nonly feared, from what he saw and heard, I was too good for the place,\nand would soon quit it for one more suitable.\n“Indeed,” cried Rosamond, “she is clever enough to be a governess in a\nhigh family, papa.”\nI thought I would far rather be where I am than in any high family in\nthe land. Mr. Oliver spoke of Mr. Rivers—of the Rivers family—with\ngreat respect. He said it was a very old name in that neighbourhood;\nthat the ancestors of the house were wealthy; that all Morton had once\nbelonged to them; that even now he considered the representative of\nthat house might, if he liked, make an alliance with the best. He\naccounted it a pity that so fine and talented a young man should have\nformed the design of going out as a missionary; it was quite throwing a\nvaluable life away. It appeared, then, that her father would throw no\nobstacle in the way of Rosamond’s union with St. John. Mr. Oliver\nevidently regarded the young clergyman’s good birth, old name, and\nsacred profession as sufficient compensation for the want of fortune.\nIt was the 5th of November, and a holiday. My little servant, after\nhelping me to clean my house, was gone, well satisfied with the fee of\na penny for her aid. All about me was spotless and bright—scoured\nfloor, polished grate, and well-rubbed chairs. I had also made myself\nneat, and had now the afternoon before me to spend as I would.\nThe translation of a few pages of German occupied an hour; then I got\nmy palette and pencils, and fell to the more soothing, because easier\noccupation, of completing Rosamond Oliver’s miniature. The head was\nfinished already: there was but the background to tint and the drapery\nto shade off; a touch of carmine, too, to add to the ripe lips—a soft\ncurl here and there to the tresses—a deeper tinge to the shadow of the\nlash under the azured eyelid. I was absorbed in the execution of these\nnice details, when, after one rapid tap, my door unclosed, admitting\nSt. John Rivers.\n“I am come to see how you are spending your holiday,” he said. “Not, I\nhope, in thought? No, that is well: while you draw you will not feel\nlonely. You see, I mistrust you still, though you have borne up\nwonderfully so far. I have brought you a book for evening solace,” and\nhe laid on the table a new publication—a poem: one of those genuine\nproductions so often vouchsafed to the fortunate public of those\ndays—the golden age of modern literature. Alas! the readers of our era\nare less favoured. But courage! I will not pause either to accuse or\nrepine. I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon\ngained power over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their\nexistence, their presence, their liberty and strength again one day.\nPowerful angels, safe in heaven! they smile when sordid souls triumph,\nand feeble ones weep over their destruction. Poetry destroyed? Genius\nbanished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the\nthought. No; they not only live, but reign and redeem: and without\ntheir divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell—the hell\nof your own meanness.\nWhile I was eagerly glancing at the bright pages of “Marmion” (for\n“Marmion” it was), St. John stooped to examine my drawing. His tall\nfigure sprang erect again with a start: he said nothing. I looked up at\nhim: he shunned my eye. I knew his thoughts well, and could read his\nheart plainly; at the moment I felt calmer and cooler than he: I had\nthen temporarily the advantage of him, and I conceived an inclination\nto do him some good, if I could.\n“With all his firmness and self-control,” thought I, “he tasks himself\ntoo far: locks every feeling and pang within—expresses, confesses,\nimparts nothing. I am sure it would benefit him to talk a little about\nthis sweet Rosamond, whom he thinks he ought not to marry: I will make\nhim talk.”\nI said first, “Take a chair, Mr. Rivers.” But he answered, as he always\ndid, that he could not stay. “Very well,” I responded, mentally, “stand\nif you like; but you shall not go just yet, I am determined: solitude\nis at least as bad for you as it is for me. I’ll try if I cannot\ndiscover the secret spring of your confidence, and find an aperture in\nthat marble breast through which I can shed one drop of the balm of\nsympathy.”\n“Is this portrait like?” I asked bluntly.\n“Like! Like whom? I did not observe it closely.”\n“You did, Mr. Rivers.”\nHe almost started at my sudden and strange abruptness: he looked at me\nastonished. “Oh, that is nothing yet,” I muttered within. “I don’t mean\nto be baffled by a little stiffness on your part; I’m prepared to go to\nconsiderable lengths.” I continued, “You observed it closely and\ndistinctly; but I have no objection to your looking at it again,” and I\nrose and placed it in his hand.\n“A well-executed picture,” he said; “very soft, clear colouring; very\ngraceful and correct drawing.”\n“Yes, yes; I know all that. But what of the resemblance? Who is it\nlike?”\nMastering some hesitation, he answered, “Miss Oliver, I presume.”\n“Of course. And now, sir, to reward you for the accurate guess, I will\npromise to paint you a careful and faithful duplicate of this very\npicture, provided you admit that the gift would be acceptable to you. I\ndon’t wish to throw away my time and trouble on an offering you would\ndeem worthless.”\nHe continued to gaze at the picture: the longer he looked, the firmer\nhe held it, the more he seemed to covet it. “It is like!” he murmured;\n“the eye is well managed: the colour, light, expression, are perfect.\nIt smiles!”\n“Would it comfort, or would it wound you to have a similar painting?\nTell me that. When you are at Madagascar, or at the Cape, or in India,\nwould it be a consolation to have that memento in your possession? or\nwould the sight of it bring recollections calculated to enervate and\ndistress?”\nHe now furtively raised his eyes: he glanced at me, irresolute,\ndisturbed: he again surveyed the picture.\n“That I should like to have it is certain: whether it would be\njudicious or wise is another question.”\nSince I had ascertained that Rosamond really preferred him, and that\nher father was not likely to oppose the match, I—less exalted in my\nviews than St. John—had been strongly disposed in my own heart to\nadvocate their union. It seemed to me that, should he become the\npossessor of Mr. Oliver’s large fortune, he might do as much good with\nit as if he went and laid his genius out to wither, and his strength to\nwaste, under a tropical sun. With this persuasion I now answered—\n“As far as I can see, it would be wiser and more judicious if you were\nto take to yourself the original at once.”\nBy this time he had sat down: he had laid the picture on the table\nbefore him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung fondly over\nit. I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity. I\nsaw even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he had deemed\nunapproachable—to hear it thus freely handled—was beginning to be felt\nby him as a new pleasure—an unhoped-for relief. Reserved people often\nreally need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more\nthan the expansive. The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and\nto “burst” with boldness and good-will into “the silent sea” of their\nsouls is often to confer on them the first of obligations.\n“She likes you, I am sure,” said I, as I stood behind his chair, “and\nher father respects you. Moreover, she is a sweet girl—rather\nthoughtless; but you would have sufficient thought for both yourself\nand her. You ought to marry her.”\n“_Does_ she like me?” he asked.\n“Certainly; better than she likes any one else. She talks of you\ncontinually: there is no subject she enjoys so much or touches upon so\noften.”\n“It is very pleasant to hear this,” he said—“very: go on for another\nquarter of an hour.” And he actually took out his watch and laid it\nupon the table to measure the time.\n“But where is the use of going on,” I asked, “when you are probably\npreparing some iron blow of contradiction, or forging a fresh chain to\nfetter your heart?”\n“Don’t imagine such hard things. Fancy me yielding and melting, as I am\ndoing: human love rising like a freshly opened fountain in my mind and\noverflowing with sweet inundation all the field I have so carefully and\nwith such labour prepared—so assiduously sown with the seeds of good\nintentions, of self-denying plans. And now it is deluged with a\nnectarous flood—the young germs swamped—delicious poison cankering\nthem: now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in the drawing-room at\nVale Hall at my bride Rosamond Oliver’s feet: she is talking to me with\nher sweet voice—gazing down on me with those eyes your skilful hand has\ncopied so well—smiling at me with these coral lips. She is mine—I am\nhers—this present life and passing world suffice to me. Hush! say\nnothing—my heart is full of delight—my senses are entranced—let the\ntime I marked pass in peace.”\nI humoured him: the watch ticked on: he breathed fast and low: I stood\nsilent. Amidst this hush the quartet sped; he replaced the watch, laid\nthe picture down, rose, and stood on the hearth.\n“Now,” said he, “that little space was given to delirium and delusion.\nI rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put my neck\nvoluntarily under her yoke of flowers; I tasted her cup. The pillow was\nburning: there is an asp in the garland: the wine has a bitter taste:\nher promises are hollow—her offers false: I see and know all this.”\nI gazed at him in wonder.\n“It is strange,” pursued he, “that while I love Rosamond Oliver so\nwildly—with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object\nof which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating—I experience\nat the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make\nme a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should\ndiscover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months’\nrapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know.”\n“Strange indeed!” I could not help ejaculating.\n“While something in me,” he went on, “is acutely sensible to her\ncharms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects: they\nare such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to—co-operate\nin nothing I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female\napostle? Rosamond a missionary’s wife? No!”\n“But you need not be a missionary. You might relinquish that scheme.”\n“Relinquish! What! my vocation? My great work? My foundation laid on\nearth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the band\nwho have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their\nrace—of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance—of substituting\npeace for war—freedom for bondage—religion for superstition—the hope of\nheaven for the fear of hell? Must I relinquish that? It is dearer than\nthe blood in my veins. It is what I have to look forward to, and to\nlive for.”\nAfter a considerable pause, I said—“And Miss Oliver? Are her\ndisappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?”\n“Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers: in less than\na month, my image will be effaced from her heart. She will forget me;\nand will marry, probably, some one who will make her far happier than I\nshould do.”\n“You speak coolly enough; but you suffer in the conflict. You are\nwasting away.”\n“No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet\nunsettled—my departure, continually procrastinated. Only this morning,\nI received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I have been\nso long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three months to\ncome yet; and perhaps the three months may extend to six.”\n“You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the\nschoolroom.”\nAgain the surprised expression crossed his face. He had not imagined\nthat a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me, I felt at home in\nthis sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with\nstrong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had\npassed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold\nof confidence, and won a place by their heart’s very hearthstone.\n“You _are_ original,” said he, “and not timid. There is something brave\nin your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me to\nassure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions. You think them\nmore profound and potent than they are. You give me a larger allowance\nof sympathy than I have a just claim to. When I colour, and when I\nshake before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself. I scorn the weakness. I\nknow it is ignoble: a mere fever of the flesh: not, I declare, the\nconvulsion of the soul. _That_ is just as fixed as a rock, firm set in\nthe depths of a restless sea. Know me to be what I am—a cold hard man.”\nI smiled incredulously.\n“You have taken my confidence by storm,” he continued, “and now it is\nmuch at your service. I am simply, in my original state—stripped of\nthat blood-bleached robe with which Christianity covers human\ndeformity—a cold, hard, ambitious man. Natural affection only, of all\nthe sentiments, has permanent power over me. Reason, and not feeling,\nis my guide; my ambition is unlimited: my desire to rise higher, to do\nmore than others, insatiable. I honour endurance, perseverance,\nindustry, talent; because these are the means by which men achieve\ngreat ends and mount to lofty eminence. I watch your career with\ninterest, because I consider you a specimen of a diligent, orderly,\nenergetic woman: not because I deeply compassionate what you have gone\nthrough, or what you still suffer.”\n“You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher,” I said.\n“No. There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers: I\nbelieve; and I believe the Gospel. You missed your epithet. I am not a\npagan, but a Christian philosopher—a follower of the sect of Jesus. As\nHis disciple I adopt His pure, His merciful, His benignant doctrines. I\nadvocate them: I am sworn to spread them. Won in youth to religion, she\nhas cultivated my original qualities thus:—From the minute germ,\nnatural affection, she has developed the overshadowing tree,\nphilanthropy. From the wild stringy root of human uprightness, she has\nreared a due sense of the Divine justice. Of the ambition to win power\nand renown for my wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread\nmy Master’s kingdom; to achieve victories for the standard of the\ncross. So much has religion done for me; turning the original materials\nto the best account; pruning and training nature. But she could not\neradicate nature: nor will it be eradicated ‘till this mortal shall put\non immortality.’”\nHaving said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside my\npalette. Once more he looked at the portrait.\n“She _is_ lovely,” he murmured. “She is well named the Rose of the\nWorld, indeed!”\n“And may I not paint one like it for you?”\n“_Cui bono_? No.”\nHe drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was\naccustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the cardboard from\nbeing sullied. What he suddenly saw on this blank paper, it was\nimpossible for me to tell; but something had caught his eye. He took it\nup with a snatch; he looked at the edge; then shot a glance at me,\ninexpressibly peculiar, and quite incomprehensible: a glance that\nseemed to take and make note of every point in my shape, face, and\ndress; for it traversed all, quick, keen as lightning. His lips parted,\nas if to speak: but he checked the coming sentence, whatever it was.\n“What is the matter?” I asked.\n“Nothing in the world,” was the reply; and, replacing the paper, I saw\nhim dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin. It disappeared in\nhis glove; and, with one hasty nod and “good-afternoon,” he vanished.\n“Well!” I exclaimed, using an expression of the district, “that caps\nthe globe, however!”\nI, in my turn, scrutinised the paper; but saw nothing on it save a few\ndingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil. I\npondered the mystery a minute or two; but finding it insolvable, and\nbeing certain it could not be of much moment, I dismissed, and soon\nforgot it.\n', 'When Mr. St. John went, it was beginning to snow; the whirling storm\ncontinued all night. The next day a keen wind brought fresh and\nblinding falls; by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost\nimpassable. I had closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to prevent\nthe snow from blowing in under it, trimmed my fire, and after sitting\nnearly an hour on the hearth listening to the muffled fury of the\ntempest, I lit a candle, took down “Marmion,” and beginning—\n“Day set on Norham’s castled steep,\nAnd Tweed’s fair river broad and deep,\n    And Cheviot’s mountains lone;\nThe massive towers, the donjon keep,\nThe flanking walls that round them sweep,\n    In yellow lustre shone”—\nI soon forgot storm in music.\nI heard a noise: the wind, I thought, shook the door. No; it was St.\nJohn Rivers, who, lifting the latch, came in out of the frozen\nhurricane—the howling darkness—and stood before me: the cloak that\ncovered his tall figure all white as a glacier. I was almost in\nconsternation, so little had I expected any guest from the blocked-up\nvale that night.\n“Any ill news?” I demanded. “Has anything happened?”\n“No. How very easily alarmed you are!” he answered, removing his cloak\nand hanging it up against the door, towards which he again coolly\npushed the mat which his entrance had deranged. He stamped the snow\nfrom his boots.\n“I shall sully the purity of your floor,” said he, “but you must excuse\nme for once.” Then he approached the fire. “I have had hard work to get\nhere, I assure you,” he observed, as he warmed his hands over the\nflame. “One drift took me up to the waist; happily the snow is quite\nsoft yet.”\n“But why are you come?” I could not forbear saying.\n“Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor; but since you ask\nit, I answer simply to have a little talk with you; I got tired of my\nmute books and empty rooms. Besides, since yesterday I have experienced\nthe excitement of a person to whom a tale has been half-told, and who\nis impatient to hear the sequel.”\nHe sat down. I recalled his singular conduct of yesterday, and really I\nbegan to fear his wits were touched. If he were insane, however, his\nwas a very cool and collected insanity: I had never seen that\nhandsome-featured face of his look more like chiselled marble than it\ndid just now, as he put aside his snow-wet hair from his forehead and\nlet the firelight shine free on his pale brow and cheek as pale, where\nit grieved me to discover the hollow trace of care or sorrow now so\nplainly graved. I waited, expecting he would say something I could at\nleast comprehend; but his hand was now at his chin, his finger on his\nlip: he was thinking. It struck me that his hand looked wasted like his\nface. A perhaps uncalled-for gush of pity came over my heart: I was\nmoved to say—\n“I wish Diana or Mary would come and live with you: it is too bad that\nyou should be quite alone; and you are recklessly rash about your own\nhealth.”\n“Not at all,” said he: “I care for myself when necessary. I am well\nnow. What do you see amiss in me?”\nThis was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which showed\nthat my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly superfluous. I\nwas silenced.\nHe still slowly moved his finger over his upper lip, and still his eye\ndwelt dreamily on the glowing grate; thinking it urgent to say\nsomething, I asked him presently if he felt any cold draught from the\ndoor, which was behind him.\n“No, no!” he responded shortly and somewhat testily.\n“Well,” I reflected, “if you won’t talk, you may be still; I’ll let you\nalone now, and return to my book.”\nSo I snuffed the candle and resumed the perusal of “Marmion.” He soon\nstirred; my eye was instantly drawn to his movements; he only took out\na morocco pocket-book, thence produced a letter, which he read in\nsilence, folded it, put it back, relapsed into meditation. It was vain\nto try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before me; nor could I,\nin impatience, consent to be dumb; he might rebuff me if he liked, but\ntalk I would.\n“Have you heard from Diana and Mary lately?”\n“Not since the letter I showed you a week ago.”\n“There has not been any change made about your own arrangements? You\nwill not be summoned to leave England sooner than you expected?”\n“I fear not, indeed: such chance is too good to befall me.” Baffled so\nfar, I changed my ground. I bethought myself to talk about the school\nand my scholars.\n“Mary Garrett’s mother is better, and Mary came back to the school this\nmorning, and I shall have four new girls next week from the Foundry\nClose—they would have come to-day but for the snow.”\n“Indeed!”\n“Mr. Oliver pays for two.”\n“Does he?”\n“He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas.”\n“I know.”\n“Was it your suggestion?”\n“No.”\n“Whose, then?”\n“His daughter’s, I think.”\n“It is like her: she is so good-natured.”\n“Yes.”\nAgain came the blank of a pause: the clock struck eight strokes. It\naroused him; he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me.\n“Leave your book a moment, and come a little nearer the fire,” he said.\nWondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied.\n“Half-an-hour ago,” he pursued, “I spoke of my impatience to hear the\nsequel of a tale: on reflection, I find the matter will be better\nmanaged by my assuming the narrator’s part, and converting you into a\nlistener. Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you that the story\nwill sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears; but stale details often\nregain a degree of freshness when they pass through new lips. For the\nrest, whether trite or novel, it is short.\n“Twenty years ago, a poor curate—never mind his name at this\nmoment—fell in love with a rich man’s daughter; she fell in love with\nhim, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who\nconsequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two\nyears passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by\nside under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the\npavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old\ncathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in ——shire.) They left a\ndaughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap—cold as\nthat of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night. Charity carried\nthe friendless thing to the house of its rich maternal relations; it\nwas reared by an aunt-in-law, called (I come to names now) Mrs. Reed of\nGateshead. You start—did you hear a noise? I daresay it is only a rat\nscrambling along the rafters of the adjoining schoolroom: it was a barn\nbefore I had it repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted\nby rats.—To proceed. Mrs. Reed kept the orphan ten years: whether it\nwas happy or not with her, I cannot say, never having been told; but at\nthe end of that time she transferred it to a place you know—being no\nother than Lowood School, where you so long resided yourself. It seems\nher career there was very honourable: from a pupil, she became a\nteacher, like yourself—really it strikes me there are parallel points\nin her history and yours—she left it to be a governess: there, again,\nyour fates were analogous; she undertook the education of the ward of a\ncertain Mr. Rochester.”\n“Mr. Rivers!” I interrupted.\n“I can guess your feelings,” he said, “but restrain them for a while: I\nhave nearly finished; hear me to the end. Of Mr. Rochester’s character\nI know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable\nmarriage to this young girl, and that at the very altar she discovered\nhe had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic. What his subsequent conduct\nand proposals were is a matter of pure conjecture; but when an event\ntranspired which rendered inquiry after the governess necessary, it was\ndiscovered she was gone—no one could tell when, where, or how. She had\nleft Thornfield Hall in the night; every research after her course had\nbeen vain: the country had been scoured far and wide; no vestige of\ninformation could be gathered respecting her. Yet that she should be\nfound is become a matter of serious urgency: advertisements have been\nput in all the papers; I myself have received a letter from one Mr.\nBriggs, a solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted. Is\nit not an odd tale?”\n“Just tell me this,” said I, “and since you know so much, you surely\n_can_ tell it me—what of Mr. Rochester? How and where is he? What is he\ndoing? Is he well?”\n“I am ignorant of all concerning Mr. Rochester: the letter never\nmentions him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I have\nadverted to. You should rather ask the name of the governess—the nature\nof the event which requires her appearance.”\n“Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then? Did no one see Mr. Rochester?”\n“I suppose not.”\n“But they wrote to him?”\n“Of course.”\n“And what did he say? Who has his letters?”\n“Mr. Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not from\nMr. Rochester, but from a lady: it is signed ‘Alice Fairfax.’”\nI felt cold and dismayed: my worst fears then were probably true: he\nhad in all probability left England and rushed in reckless desperation\nto some former haunt on the Continent. And what opiate for his severe\nsufferings—what object for his strong passions—had he sought there? I\ndared not answer the question. Oh, my poor master—once almost my\nhusband—whom I had often called “my dear Edward!”\n“He must have been a bad man,” observed Mr. Rivers.\n“You don’t know him—don’t pronounce an opinion upon him,” I said, with\nwarmth.\n“Very well,” he answered quietly: “and indeed my head is otherwise\noccupied than with him: I have my tale to finish. Since you won’t ask\nthe governess’s name, I must tell it of my own accord. Stay! I have it\nhere—it is always more satisfactory to see important points written\ndown, fairly committed to black and white.”\nAnd the pocket-book was again deliberately produced, opened, sought\nthrough; from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip of\npaper, hastily torn off: I recognised in its texture and its stains of\nultra-marine, and lake, and vermillion, the ravished margin of the\nportrait-cover. He got up, held it close to my eyes: and I read, traced\nin Indian ink, in my own handwriting, the words “JANE EYRE”—the work\ndoubtless of some moment of abstraction.\n“Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre:” he said, “the advertisements\ndemanded a Jane Eyre: I knew a Jane Elliott.—I confess I had my\nsuspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once\nresolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the _alias_?”\n“Yes—yes; but where is Mr. Briggs? He perhaps knows more of Mr.\nRochester than you do.”\n“Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all about\nMr. Rochester; it is not in Mr. Rochester he is interested. Meantime,\nyou forget essential points in pursuing trifles: you do not inquire why\nMr. Briggs sought after you—what he wanted with you.”\n“Well, what did he want?”\n“Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead; that\nhe has left you all his property, and that you are now rich—merely\nthat—nothing more.”\n“I!—rich?”\n“Yes, you, rich—quite an heiress.”\nSilence succeeded.\n“You must prove your identity of course,” resumed St. John presently:\n“a step which will offer no difficulties; you can then enter on\nimmediate possession. Your fortune is vested in the English funds;\nBriggs has the will and the necessary documents.”\nHere was a new card turned up! It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted\nin a moment from indigence to wealth—a very fine thing; but not a\nmatter one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once. And then\nthere are other chances in life far more thrilling and rapture-giving:\n_this_ is solid, an affair of the actual world, nothing ideal about it:\nall its associations are solid and sober, and its manifestations are\nthe same. One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing\none has got a fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities, and to\nponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave\ncares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn\nbrow.\nBesides, the words Legacy, Bequest, go side by side with the words,\nDeath, Funeral. My uncle I had heard was dead—my only relative; ever\nsince being made aware of his existence, I had cherished the hope of\none day seeing him: now, I never should. And then this money came only\nto me: not to me and a rejoicing family, but to my isolated self. It\nwas a grand boon doubtless; and independence would be glorious—yes, I\nfelt that—_that_ thought swelled my heart.\n“You unbend your forehead at last,” said Mr. Rivers. “I thought Medusa\nhad looked at you, and that you were turning to stone. Perhaps now you\nwill ask how much you are worth?”\n“How much am I worth?”\n“Oh, a trifle! Nothing of course to speak of—twenty thousand pounds, I\nthink they say—but what is that?”\n“Twenty thousand pounds?”\nHere was a new stunner—I had been calculating on four or five thousand.\nThis news actually took my breath for a moment: Mr. St. John, whom I\nhad never heard laugh before, laughed now.\n“Well,” said he, “if you had committed a murder, and I had told you\nyour crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast.”\n“It is a large sum—don’t you think there is a mistake?”\n“No mistake at all.”\n“Perhaps you have read the figures wrong—it may be two thousand!”\n“It is written in letters, not figures,—twenty thousand.”\nI again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical\npowers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions\nfor a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on.\n“If it were not such a very wild night,” he said, “I would send Hannah\ndown to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable to be left\nalone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the drifts so well as\nI: her legs are not quite so long: so I must e’en leave you to your\nsorrows. Good-night.”\nHe was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me.\n“Stop one minute!” I cried.\n“Well?”\n“It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me; or how he\nknew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-way\nplace, had the power to aid in my discovery.”\n“Oh! I am a clergyman,” he said; “and the clergy are often appealed to\nabout odd matters.” Again the latch rattled.\n“No; that does not satisfy me!” I exclaimed: and indeed there was\nsomething in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of\nallaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever.\n“It is a very strange piece of business,” I added; “I must know more\nabout it.”\n“Another time.”\n“No; to-night!—to-night!” and as he turned from the door, I placed\nmyself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed.\n“You certainly shall not go till you have told me all,” I said.\n“I would rather not just now.”\n“You shall!—you must!”\n“I would rather Diana or Mary informed you.”\nOf course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax: gratified\nit must be, and that without delay; and I told him so.\n“But I apprised you that I was a hard man,” said he, “difficult to\npersuade.”\n“And I am a hard woman,—impossible to put off.”\nAnd I am a hard woman,—impossible to put off\n“And then,” he pursued, “I am cold: no fervour infects me.”\n“Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has thawed\nall the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has streamed on to\nmy floor, and made it like a trampled street. As you hope ever to be\nforgiven, Mr. Rivers, the high crime and misdemeanour of spoiling a\nsanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to know.”\n“Well, then,” he said, “I yield; if not to your earnestness, to your\nperseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping. Besides, you must\nknow some day,—as well now as later. Your name is Jane Eyre?”\n“Of course: that was all settled before.”\n“You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake?—that I was\nchristened St. John Eyre Rivers?”\n“No, indeed! I remember now seeing the letter E. comprised in your\ninitials written in books you have at different times lent me; but I\nnever asked for what name it stood. But what then? Surely—”\nI stopped: I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to express,\nthe thought that rushed upon me—that embodied itself,—that, in a\nsecond, stood out a strong, solid probability. Circumstances knit\nthemselves, fitted themselves, shot into order: the chain that had been\nlying hitherto a formless lump of links was drawn out straight,—every\nring was perfect, the connection complete. I knew, by instinct, how the\nmatter stood, before St. John had said another word; but I cannot\nexpect the reader to have the same intuitive perception, so I must\nrepeat his explanation.\n“My mother’s name was Eyre; she had two brothers; one a clergyman, who\nmarried Miss Jane Reed, of Gateshead; the other, John Eyre, Esq.,\nmerchant, late of Funchal, Madeira. Mr. Briggs, being Mr. Eyre’s\nsolicitor, wrote to us last August to inform us of our uncle’s death,\nand to say that he had left his property to his brother the clergyman’s\norphan daughter, overlooking us, in consequence of a quarrel, never\nforgiven, between him and my father. He wrote again a few weeks since,\nto intimate that the heiress was lost, and asking if we knew anything\nof her. A name casually written on a slip of paper has enabled me to\nfind her out. You know the rest.” Again he was going, but I set my back\nagainst the door.\n“Do let me speak,” I said; “let me have one moment to draw breath and\nreflect.” I paused—he stood before me, hat in hand, looking composed\nenough. I resumed—\n“Your mother was my father’s sister?”\n“Yes.”\n“My aunt, consequently?”\nHe bowed.\n“My uncle John was your uncle John? You, Diana, and Mary are his\nsister’s children, as I am his brother’s child?”\n“Undeniably.”\n“You three, then, are my cousins; half our blood on each side flows\nfrom the same source?”\n“We are cousins; yes.”\nI surveyed him. It seemed I had found a brother: one I could be proud\nof,—one I could love; and two sisters, whose qualities were such, that,\nwhen I knew them but as mere strangers, they had inspired me with\ngenuine affection and admiration. The two girls, on whom, kneeling down\non the wet ground, and looking through the low, latticed window of Moor\nHouse kitchen, I had gazed with so bitter a mixture of interest and\ndespair, were my near kinswomen; and the young and stately gentleman\nwho had found me almost dying at his threshold was my blood relation.\nGlorious discovery to a lonely wretch! This was wealth indeed!—wealth\nto the heart!—a mine of pure, genial affections. This was a blessing,\nbright, vivid, and exhilarating;—not like the ponderous gift of gold:\nrich and welcome enough in its way, but sobering from its weight. I now\nclapped my hands in sudden joy—my pulse bounded, my veins thrilled.\n“Oh, I am glad!—I am glad!” I exclaimed.\nSt. John smiled. “Did I not say you neglected essential points to\npursue trifles?” he asked. “You were serious when I told you you had\ngot a fortune; and now, for a matter of no moment, you are excited.”\n“What _can_ you mean? It may be of no moment to you; you have sisters\nand don’t care for a cousin; but I had nobody; and now three\nrelations,—or two, if you don’t choose to be counted,—are born into my\nworld full-grown. I say again, I am glad!”\nI walked fast through the room: I stopped, half suffocated with the\nthoughts that rose faster than I could receive, comprehend, settle\nthem:—thoughts of what might, could, would, and should be, and that ere\nlong. I looked at the blank wall: it seemed a sky thick with ascending\nstars,—every one lit me to a purpose or delight. Those who had saved my\nlife, whom, till this hour, I had loved barrenly, I could now benefit.\nThey were under a yoke,—I could free them: they were scattered,—I could\nreunite them: the independence, the affluence which was mine, might be\ntheirs too. Were we not four? Twenty thousand pounds shared equally\nwould be five thousand each, justice—enough and to spare: justice would\nbe done,—mutual happiness secured. Now the wealth did not weigh on me:\nnow it was not a mere bequest of coin,—it was a legacy of life, hope,\nenjoyment.\nHow I looked while these ideas were taking my spirit by storm, I cannot\ntell; but I perceived soon that Mr. Rivers had placed a chair behind\nme, and was gently attempting to make me sit down on it. He also\nadvised me to be composed; I scorned the insinuation of helplessness\nand distraction, shook off his hand, and began to walk about again.\n“Write to Diana and Mary to-morrow,” I said, “and tell them to come\nhome directly. Diana said they would both consider themselves rich with\na thousand pounds, so with five thousand they will do very well.”\n“Tell me where I can get you a glass of water,” said St. John; “you\nmust really make an effort to tranquillise your feelings.”\n“Nonsense! and what sort of an effect will the bequest have on you?\nWill it keep you in England, induce you to marry Miss Oliver, and\nsettle down like an ordinary mortal?”\n“You wander: your head becomes confused. I have been too abrupt in\ncommunicating the news; it has excited you beyond your strength.”\n“Mr. Rivers! you quite put me out of patience: I am rational enough; it\nis you who misunderstand, or rather who affect to misunderstand.”\n“Perhaps, if you explained yourself a little more fully, I should\ncomprehend better.”\n“Explain! What is there to explain? You cannot fail to see that twenty\nthousand pounds, the sum in question, divided equally between the\nnephew and three nieces of our uncle, will give five thousand to each?\nWhat I want is, that you should write to your sisters and tell them of\nthe fortune that has accrued to them.”\n“To you, you mean.”\n“I have intimated my view of the case: I am incapable of taking any\nother. I am not brutally selfish, blindly unjust, or fiendishly\nungrateful. Besides, I am resolved I will have a home and connections.\nI like Moor House, and I will live at Moor House; I like Diana and\nMary, and I will attach myself for life to Diana and Mary. It would\nplease and benefit me to have five thousand pounds; it would torment\nand oppress me to have twenty thousand; which, moreover, could never be\nmine in justice, though it might in law. I abandon to you, then, what\nis absolutely superfluous to me. Let there be no opposition, and no\ndiscussion about it; let us agree amongst each other, and decide the\npoint at once.”\n“This is acting on first impulses; you must take days to consider such\na matter, ere your word can be regarded as valid.”\n“Oh! if all you doubt is my sincerity, I am easy: you see the justice\nof the case?”\n“I _do_ see a certain justice; but it is contrary to all custom.\nBesides, the entire fortune is your right: my uncle gained it by his\nown efforts; he was free to leave it to whom he would: he left it to\nyou. After all, justice permits you to keep it: you may, with a clear\nconscience, consider it absolutely your own.”\n“With me,” said I, “it is fully as much a matter of feeling as of\nconscience: I must indulge my feelings; I so seldom have had an\nopportunity of doing so. Were you to argue, object, and annoy me for a\nyear, I could not forego the delicious pleasure of which I have caught\na glimpse—that of repaying, in part, a mighty obligation, and winning\nto myself lifelong friends.”\n“You think so now,” rejoined St. John, “because you do not know what it\nis to possess, nor consequently to enjoy wealth: you cannot form a\nnotion of the importance twenty thousand pounds would give you; of the\nplace it would enable you to take in society; of the prospects it would\nopen to you: you cannot—”\n“And you,” I interrupted, “cannot at all imagine the craving I have for\nfraternal and sisterly love. I never had a home, I never had brothers\nor sisters; I must and will have them now: you are not reluctant to\nadmit me and own me, are you?”\n“Jane, I will be your brother—my sisters will be your sisters—without\nstipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights.”\n“Brother? Yes; at the distance of a thousand leagues! Sisters? Yes;\nslaving amongst strangers! I, wealthy—gorged with gold I never earned\nand do not merit! You, penniless! Famous equality and fraternisation!\nClose union! Intimate attachment!”\n“But, Jane, your aspirations after family ties and domestic happiness\nmay be realised otherwise than by the means you contemplate: you may\nmarry.”\n“Nonsense, again! Marry! I don’t want to marry, and never shall marry.”\n“That is saying too much: such hazardous affirmations are a proof of\nthe excitement under which you labour.”\n“It is not saying too much: I know what I feel, and how averse are my\ninclinations to the bare thought of marriage. No one would take me for\nlove; and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere money\nspeculation. And I do not want a stranger—unsympathising, alien,\ndifferent from me; I want my kindred: those with whom I have full\nfellow-feeling. Say again you will be my brother: when you uttered the\nwords I was satisfied, happy; repeat them, if you can, repeat them\nsincerely.”\n“I think I can. I know I have always loved my own sisters; and I know\non what my affection for them is grounded,—respect for their worth and\nadmiration of their talents. You too have principle and mind: your\ntastes and habits resemble Diana’s and Mary’s; your presence is always\nagreeable to me; in your conversation I have already for some time\nfound a salutary solace. I feel I can easily and naturally make room in\nmy heart for you, as my third and youngest sister.”\n“Thank you: that contents me for to-night. Now you had better go; for\nif you stay longer, you will perhaps irritate me afresh by some\nmistrustful scruple.”\n“And the school, Miss Eyre? It must now be shut up, I suppose?”\n“No. I will retain my post of mistress till you get a substitute.”\nHe smiled approbation: we shook hands, and he took leave.\nI need not narrate in detail the further struggles I had, and arguments\nI used, to get matters regarding the legacy settled as I wished. My\ntask was a very hard one; but, as I was absolutely resolved—as my\ncousins saw at length that my mind was really and immutably fixed on\nmaking a just division of the property—as they must in their own hearts\nhave felt the equity of the intention; and must, besides, have been\ninnately conscious that in my place they would have done precisely what\nI wished to do—they yielded at length so far as to consent to put the\naffair to arbitration. The judges chosen were Mr. Oliver and an able\nlawyer: both coincided in my opinion: I carried my point. The\ninstruments of transfer were drawn out: St. John, Diana, Mary, and I,\neach became possessed of a competency.\n', 'It was near Christmas by the time all was settled: the season of\ngeneral holiday approached. I now closed Morton school, taking care\nthat the parting should not be barren on my side. Good fortune opens\nthe hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we\nhave largely received, is but to afford a vent to the unusual\nebullition of the sensations. I had long felt with pleasure that many\nof my rustic scholars liked me, and when we parted, that consciousness\nwas confirmed: they manifested their affection plainly and strongly.\nDeep was my gratification to find I had really a place in their\nunsophisticated hearts: I promised them that never a week should pass\nin future that I did not visit them, and give them an hour’s teaching\nin their school.\nMr. Rivers came up as, having seen the classes, now numbering sixty\ngirls, file out before me, and locked the door, I stood with the key in\nmy hand, exchanging a few words of special farewell with some\nhalf-dozen of my best scholars: as decent, respectable, modest, and\nwell-informed young women as could be found in the ranks of the British\npeasantry. And that is saying a great deal; for after all, the British\npeasantry are the best taught, best mannered, most self-respecting of\nany in Europe: since those days I have seen paysannes and Bäuerinnen;\nand the best of them seemed to me ignorant, coarse, and besotted,\ncompared with my Morton girls.\n“Do you consider you have got your reward for a season of exertion?”\nasked Mr. Rivers, when they were gone. “Does not the consciousness of\nhaving done some real good in your day and generation give pleasure?”\n“Doubtless.”\n“And you have only toiled a few months! Would not a life devoted to the\ntask of regenerating your race be well spent?”\n“Yes,” I said; “but I could not go on for ever so: I want to enjoy my\nown faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. I must\nenjoy them now; don’t recall either my mind or body to the school; I am\nout of it and disposed for full holiday.”\nHe looked grave. “What now? What sudden eagerness is this you evince?\nWhat are you going to do?”\n“To be active: as active as I can. And first I must beg you to set\nHannah at liberty, and get somebody else to wait on you.”\n“Do you want her?”\n“Yes, to go with me to Moor House. Diana and Mary will be at home in a\nweek, and I want to have everything in order against their arrival.”\n“I understand. I thought you were for flying off on some excursion. It\nis better so: Hannah shall go with you.”\n“Tell her to be ready by to-morrow then; and here is the schoolroom\nkey: I will give you the key of my cottage in the morning.”\nHe took it. “You give it up very gleefully,” said he; “I don’t quite\nunderstand your light-heartedness, because I cannot tell what\nemployment you propose to yourself as a substitute for the one you are\nrelinquishing. What aim, what purpose, what ambition in life have you\nnow?”\n“My first aim will be to _clean down_ (do you comprehend the full force\nof the expression?)—to _clean down_ Moor House from chamber to cellar;\nmy next to rub it up with bees-wax, oil, and an indefinite number of\ncloths, till it glitters again; my third, to arrange every chair,\ntable, bed, carpet, with mathematical precision; afterwards I shall go\nnear to ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in every room;\nand lastly, the two days preceding that on which your sisters are\nexpected will be devoted by Hannah and me to such a beating of eggs,\nsorting of currants, grating of spices, compounding of Christmas cakes,\nchopping up of materials for mince-pies, and solemnising of other\nculinary rites, as words can convey but an inadequate notion of to the\nuninitiated like you. My purpose, in short, is to have all things in an\nabsolutely perfect state of readiness for Diana and Mary before next\nThursday; and my ambition is to give them a beau-ideal of a welcome\nwhen they come.”\nSt. John smiled slightly: still he was dissatisfied.\n“It is all very well for the present,” said he; “but seriously, I trust\nthat when the first flush of vivacity is over, you will look a little\nhigher than domestic endearments and household joys.”\n“The best things the world has!” I interrupted.\n“No, Jane, no: this world is not the scene of fruition; do not attempt\nto make it so: nor of rest; do not turn slothful.”\n“I mean, on the contrary, to be busy.”\n“Jane, I excuse you for the present: two months’ grace I allow you for\nthe full enjoyment of your new position, and for pleasing yourself with\nthis late-found charm of relationship; but _then_, I hope you will\nbegin to look beyond Moor House and Morton, and sisterly society, and\nthe selfish calm and sensual comfort of civilised affluence. I hope\nyour energies will then once more trouble you with their strength.”\nI looked at him with surprise. “St. John,” I said, “I think you are\nalmost wicked to talk so. I am disposed to be as content as a queen,\nand you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end?”\n“To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed to\nyour keeping; and of which He will surely one day demand a strict\naccount. Jane, I shall watch you closely and anxiously—I warn you of\nthat. And try to restrain the disproportionate fervour with which you\nthrow yourself into commonplace home pleasures. Don’t cling so\ntenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an\nadequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite transient objects. Do\nyou hear, Jane?”\n“Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate cause\nto be happy, and I _will_ be happy. Goodbye!”\nHappy at Moor House I was, and hard I worked; and so did Hannah: she\nwas charmed to see how jovial I could be amidst the bustle of a house\nturned topsy-turvy—how I could brush, and dust, and clean, and cook.\nAnd really, after a day or two of confusion worse confounded, it was\ndelightful by degrees to invoke order from the chaos ourselves had\nmade. I had previously taken a journey to S—— to purchase some new\nfurniture: my cousins having given me _carte blanche_ to effect what\nalterations I pleased, and a sum having been set aside for that\npurpose. The ordinary sitting-room and bedrooms I left much as they\nwere: for I knew Diana and Mary would derive more pleasure from seeing\nagain the old homely tables, and chairs, and beds, than from the\nspectacle of the smartest innovations. Still some novelty was\nnecessary, to give to their return the piquancy with which I wished it\nto be invested. Dark handsome new carpets and curtains, an arrangement\nof some carefully selected antique ornaments in porcelain and bronze,\nnew coverings, and mirrors, and dressing-cases, for the toilet tables,\nanswered the end: they looked fresh without being glaring. A spare\nparlour and bedroom I refurnished entirely, with old mahogany and\ncrimson upholstery: I laid canvas on the passage, and carpets on the\nstairs. When all was finished, I thought Moor House as complete a model\nof bright modest snugness within, as it was, at this season, a specimen\nof wintry waste and desert dreariness without.\nThe eventful Thursday at length came. They were expected about dark,\nand ere dusk fires were lit upstairs and below; the kitchen was in\nperfect trim; Hannah and I were dressed, and all was in readiness.\nSt. John arrived first. I had entreated him to keep quite clear of the\nhouse till everything was arranged: and, indeed, the bare idea of the\ncommotion, at once sordid and trivial, going on within its walls\nsufficed to scare him to estrangement. He found me in the kitchen,\nwatching the progress of certain cakes for tea, then baking.\nApproaching the hearth, he asked, “If I was at last satisfied with\nhousemaid’s work?” I answered by inviting him to accompany me on a\ngeneral inspection of the result of my labours. With some difficulty, I\ngot him to make the tour of the house. He just looked in at the doors I\nopened; and when he had wandered upstairs and downstairs, he said I\nmust have gone through a great deal of fatigue and trouble to have\neffected such considerable changes in so short a time: but not a\nsyllable did he utter indicating pleasure in the improved aspect of his\nabode.\nThis silence damped me. I thought perhaps the alterations had disturbed\nsome old associations he valued. I inquired whether this was the case:\nno doubt in a somewhat crest-fallen tone.\n“Not at all; he had, on the contrary, remarked that I had scrupulously\nrespected every association: he feared, indeed, I must have bestowed\nmore thought on the matter than it was worth. How many minutes, for\ninstance, had I devoted to studying the arrangement of this very\nroom?—By-the-bye, could I tell him where such a book was?”\nI showed him the volume on the shelf: he took it down, and withdrawing\nto his accustomed window recess, he began to read it.\nNow, I did not like this, reader. St. John was a good man; but I began\nto feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard and\ncold. The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for\nhim—its peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally, he lived only to\naspire—after what was good and great, certainly; but still he would\nnever rest, nor approve of others resting round him. As I looked at his\nlofty forehead, still and pale as a white stone—at his fine lineaments\nfixed in study—I comprehended all at once that he would hardly make a\ngood husband: that it would be a trying thing to be his wife. I\nunderstood, as by inspiration, the nature of his love for Miss Oliver;\nI agreed with him that it was but a love of the senses. I comprehended\nhow he should despise himself for the feverish influence it exercised\nover him; how he should wish to stifle and destroy it; how he should\nmistrust its ever conducting permanently to his happiness or hers. I\nsaw he was of the material from which nature hews her heroes—Christian\nand Pagan—her lawgivers, her statesmen, her conquerors: a steadfast\nbulwark for great interests to rest upon; but, at the fireside, too\noften a cold cumbrous column, gloomy and out of place.\n“This parlour is not his sphere,” I reflected: “the Himalayan ridge or\nCaffre bush, even the plague-cursed Guinea Coast swamp would suit him\nbetter. Well may he eschew the calm of domestic life; it is not his\nelement: there his faculties stagnate—they cannot develop or appear to\nadvantage. It is in scenes of strife and danger—where courage is\nproved, and energy exercised, and fortitude tasked—that he will speak\nand move, the leader and superior. A merry child would have the\nadvantage of him on this hearth. He is right to choose a missionary’s\ncareer—I see it now.”\n“They are coming! they are coming!” cried Hannah, throwing open the\nparlour door. At the same moment old Carlo barked joyfully. Out I ran.\nIt was now dark; but a rumbling of wheels was audible. Hannah soon had\na lantern lit. The vehicle had stopped at the wicket; the driver opened\nthe door: first one well-known form, then another, stepped out. In a\nminute I had my face under their bonnets, in contact first with Mary’s\nsoft cheek, then with Diana’s flowing curls. They laughed—kissed\nme—then Hannah: patted Carlo, who was half wild with delight; asked\neagerly if all was well; and being assured in the affirmative, hastened\ninto the house.\nThey were stiff with their long and jolting drive from Whitcross, and\nchilled with the frosty night air; but their pleasant countenances\nexpanded to the cheerful firelight. While the driver and Hannah brought\nin the boxes, they demanded St. John. At this moment he advanced from\nthe parlour. They both threw their arms round his neck at once. He gave\neach one quiet kiss, said in a low tone a few words of welcome, stood a\nwhile to be talked to, and then, intimating that he supposed they would\nsoon rejoin him in the parlour, withdrew there as to a place of refuge.\nI had lit their candles to go upstairs, but Diana had first to give\nhospitable orders respecting the driver; this done, both followed me.\nThey were delighted with the renovation and decorations of their rooms;\nwith the new drapery, and fresh carpets, and rich tinted china vases:\nthey expressed their gratification ungrudgingly. I had the pleasure of\nfeeling that my arrangements met their wishes exactly, and that what I\nhad done added a vivid charm to their joyous return home.\nSweet was that evening. My cousins, full of exhilaration, were so\neloquent in narrative and comment, that their fluency covered St.\nJohn’s taciturnity: he was sincerely glad to see his sisters; but in\ntheir glow of fervour and flow of joy he could not sympathise. The\nevent of the day—that is, the return of Diana and Mary—pleased him; but\nthe accompaniments of that event, the glad tumult, the garrulous glee\nof reception irked him: I saw he wished the calmer morrow was come. In\nthe very meridian of the night’s enjoyment, about an hour after tea, a\nrap was heard at the door. Hannah entered with the intimation that “a\npoor lad was come, at that unlikely time, to fetch Mr. Rivers to see\nhis mother, who was drawing away.”\n“Where does she live, Hannah?”\n“Clear up at Whitcross Brow, almost four miles off, and moor and moss\nall the way.”\n“Tell him I will go.”\n“I’m sure, sir, you had better not. It’s the worst road to travel after\ndark that can be: there’s no track at all over the bog. And then it is\nsuch a bitter night—the keenest wind you ever felt. You had better send\nword, sir, that you will be there in the morning.”\nBut he was already in the passage, putting on his cloak; and without\none objection, one murmur, he departed. It was then nine o’clock: he\ndid not return till midnight. Starved and tired enough he was: but he\nlooked happier than when he set out. He had performed an act of duty;\nmade an exertion; felt his own strength to do and deny, and was on\nbetter terms with himself.\nI am afraid the whole of the ensuing week tried his patience. It was\nChristmas week: we took to no settled employment, but spent it in a\nsort of merry domestic dissipation. The air of the moors, the freedom\nof home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and Mary’s spirits like\nsome life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning till noon, and from\nnoon till night. They could always talk; and their discourse, witty,\npithy, original, had such charms for me, that I preferred listening to,\nand sharing in it, to doing anything else. St. John did not rebuke our\nvivacity; but he escaped from it: he was seldom in the house; his\nparish was large, the population scattered, and he found daily business\nin visiting the sick and poor in its different districts.\nOne morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for\nsome minutes, asked him, “If his plans were yet unchanged.”\n“Unchanged and unchangeable,” was the reply. And he proceeded to inform\nus that his departure from England was now definitively fixed for the\nensuing year.\n“And Rosamond Oliver?” suggested Mary, the words seeming to escape her\nlips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them, than she made a\ngesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a book in his\nhand—it was his unsocial custom to read at meals—he closed it, and\nlooked up.\n“Rosamond Oliver,” said he, “is about to be married to Mr. Granby, one\nof the best connected and most estimable residents in S——, grandson and\nheir to Sir Frederic Granby: I had the intelligence from her father\nyesterday.”\nHis sisters looked at each other and at me; we all three looked at him:\nhe was serene as glass.\n“The match must have been got up hastily,” said Diana: “they cannot\nhave known each other long.”\n“But two months: they met in October at the county ball at S——. But\nwhere there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case, where\nthe connection is in every point desirable, delays are unnecessary:\nthey will be married as soon as S—— Place, which Sir Frederic gives up\nto them, can be refitted for their reception.”\nThe first time I found St. John alone after this communication, I felt\ntempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed so little\nto need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him more, I\nexperienced some shame at the recollection of what I had already\nhazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him: his reserve\nwas again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed beneath it. He\nhad not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he\ncontinually made little chilling differences between us, which did not\nat all tend to the development of cordiality: in short, now that I was\nacknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under the same roof with him, I\nfelt the distance between us to be far greater than when he had known\nme only as the village schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had\nonce been admitted to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his\npresent frigidity.\nSuch being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised his\nhead suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said—\n“You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won.”\nStartled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply: after a\nmoment’s hesitation I answered—\n“But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors whose\ntriumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin you?”\n“I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall never be\ncalled upon to contend for such another. The event of the conflict is\ndecisive: my way is now clear; I thank God for it!” So saying, he\nreturned to his papers and his silence.\nAs our mutual happiness (_i.e._, Diana’s, Mary’s, and mine) settled\ninto a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and regular\nstudies, St. John stayed more at home: he sat with us in the same room,\nsometimes for hours together. While Mary drew, Diana pursued a course\nof encyclopædic reading she had (to my awe and amazement) undertaken,\nand I fagged away at German, he pondered a mystic lore of his own: that\nof some Eastern tongue, the acquisition of which he thought necessary\nto his plans.\nThus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and\nabsorbed enough; but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the\noutlandish-looking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes fixing\nupon us, his fellow-students, with a curious intensity of observation:\nif caught, it would be instantly withdrawn; yet ever and anon, it\nreturned searchingly to our table. I wondered what it meant: I\nwondered, too, at the punctual satisfaction he never failed to exhibit\non an occasion that seemed to me of small moment, namely, my weekly\nvisit to Morton school; and still more was I puzzled when, if the day\nwas unfavourable, if there was snow, or rain, or high wind, and his\nsisters urged me not to go, he would invariably make light of their\nsolicitude, and encourage me to accomplish the task without regard to\nthe elements.\n“Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her,” he would say: “she\ncan bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of snow, as\nwell as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and elastic;—better\ncalculated to endure variations of climate than many more robust.”\nAnd when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired, and not a little\nweather-beaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to murmur\nwould be to vex him: on all occasions fortitude pleased him; the\nreverse was a special annoyance.\nOne afternoon, however, I got leave to stay at home, because I really\nhad a cold. His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead: I sat reading\nSchiller; he, deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls. As I exchanged\na translation for an exercise, I happened to look his way: there I\nfound myself under the influence of the ever-watchful blue eye. How\nlong it had been searching me through and through, and over and over, I\ncannot tell: so keen was it, and yet so cold, I felt for the moment\nsuperstitious—as if I were sitting in the room with something uncanny.\n“Jane, what are you doing?”\n“Learning German.”\n“I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee.”\n“You are not in earnest?”\n“In such earnest that I must have it so: and I will tell you why.”\nHe then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he was\nhimself at present studying; that, as he advanced, he was apt to forget\nthe commencement; that it would assist him greatly to have a pupil with\nwhom he might again and again go over the elements, and so fix them\nthoroughly in his mind; that his choice had hovered for some time\nbetween me and his sisters; but that he had fixed on me because he saw\nI could sit at a task the longest of the three. Would I do him this\nfavour? I should not, perhaps, have to make the sacrifice long, as it\nwanted now barely three months to his departure.\nSt. John was not a man to be lightly refused: you felt that every\nimpression made on him, either for pain or pleasure, was deep-graved\nand permanent. I consented. When Diana and Mary returned, the former\nfound her scholar transferred from her to her brother: she laughed, and\nboth she and Mary agreed that St. John should never have persuaded them\nto such a step. He answered quietly—\n“I know it.”\nI found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting\nmaster: he expected me to do a great deal; and when I fulfilled his\nexpectations, he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation. By\ndegrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my\nliberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than his\nindifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by,\nbecause a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity (at\nleast in me) was distasteful to him. I was so fully aware that only\nserious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his presence\nevery effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I fell under a\nfreezing spell. When he said “go,” I went; “come,” I came; “do this,” I\ndid it. But I did not love my servitude: I wished, many a time, he had\ncontinued to neglect me.\nOne evening when, at bedtime, his sisters and I stood round him,\nbidding him good-night, he kissed each of them, as was his custom; and,\nas was equally his custom, he gave me his hand. Diana, who chanced to\nbe in a frolicsome humour (_she_ was not painfully controlled by his\nwill; for hers, in another way, was as strong), exclaimed—\n“St. John! you used to call Jane your third sister, but you don’t treat\nher as such: you should kiss her too.”\nShe pushed me towards him. I thought Diana very provoking, and felt\nuncomfortably confused; and while I was thus thinking and feeling, St.\nJohn bent his head; his Greek face was brought to a level with mine,\nhis eyes questioned my eyes piercingly—he kissed me. There are no such\nthings as marble kisses or ice kisses, or I should say my\necclesiastical cousin’s salute belonged to one of these classes; but\nthere may be experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss. When\ngiven, he viewed me to learn the result; it was not striking: I am sure\nI did not blush; perhaps I might have turned a little pale, for I felt\nas if this kiss were a seal affixed to my fetters. He never omitted the\nceremony afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with which I\nunderwent it, seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm.\nAs for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt\ndaily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my\nfaculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to\nthe adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation. He wanted\nto train me to an elevation I could never reach; it racked me hourly to\naspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing was as impossible as to\nmould my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern, to give\nto my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint and solemn lustre of his\nown.\nNot his ascendancy alone, however, held me in thrall at present. Of\nlate it had been easy enough for me to look sad: a cankering evil sat\nat my heart and drained my happiness at its source—the evil of\nsuspense.\nPerhaps you think I had forgotten Mr. Rochester, reader, amidst these\nchanges of place and fortune. Not for a moment. His idea was still with\nme, because it was not a vapour sunshine could disperse, nor a\nsand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was a name graven on a\ntablet, fated to last as long as the marble it inscribed. The craving\nto know what had become of him followed me everywhere; when I was at\nMorton, I re-entered my cottage every evening to think of that; and now\nat Moor House, I sought my bedroom each night to brood over it.\nIn the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr. Briggs about the\nwill, I had inquired if he knew anything of Mr. Rochester’s present\nresidence and state of health; but, as St. John had conjectured, he was\nquite ignorant of all concerning him. I then wrote to Mrs. Fairfax,\nentreating information on the subject. I had calculated with certainty\non this step answering my end: I felt sure it would elicit an early\nanswer. I was astonished when a fortnight passed without reply; but\nwhen two months wore away, and day after day the post arrived and\nbrought nothing for me, I fell a prey to the keenest anxiety.\nI wrote again: there was a chance of my first letter having missed.\nRenewed hope followed renewed effort: it shone like the former for some\nweeks, then, like it, it faded, flickered: not a line, not a word\nreached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died\nout, and then I felt dark indeed.\nA fine spring shone round me, which I could not enjoy. Summer\napproached; Diana tried to cheer me: she said I looked ill, and wished\nto accompany me to the sea-side. This St. John opposed; he said I did\nnot want dissipation, I wanted employment; my present life was too\npurposeless, I required an aim; and, I suppose, by way of supplying\ndeficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindostanee, and\ngrew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment: and I, like a fool,\nnever thought of resisting him—I could not resist him.\nOne day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual; the ebb\nwas occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment. Hannah had told me\nin the morning there was a letter for me, and when I went down to take\nit, almost certain that the long-looked for tidings were vouchsafed me\nat last, I found only an unimportant note from Mr. Briggs on business.\nThe bitter check had wrung from me some tears; and now, as I sat poring\nover the crabbed characters and flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe,\nmy eyes filled again.\nSt. John called me to his side to read; in attempting to do this my\nvoice failed me: words were lost in sobs. He and I were the only\noccupants of the parlour: Diana was practising her music in the\ndrawing-room, Mary was gardening—it was a very fine May day, clear,\nsunny, and breezy. My companion expressed no surprise at this emotion,\nnor did he question me as to its cause; he only said—\n“We will wait a few minutes, Jane, till you are more composed.” And\nwhile I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and patient,\nleaning on his desk, and looking like a physician watching with the eye\nof science an expected and fully understood crisis in a patient’s\nmalady. Having stifled my sobs, wiped my eyes, and muttered something\nabout not being very well that morning, I resumed my task, and\nsucceeded in completing it. St. John put away my books and his, locked\nhis desk, and said—\n“Now, Jane, you shall take a walk; and with me.”\n“I will call Diana and Mary.”\n“No; I want only one companion this morning, and that must be you. Put\non your things; go out by the kitchen-door: take the road towards the\nhead of Marsh Glen: I will join you in a moment.”\nI know no medium: I never in my life have known any medium in my\ndealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own,\nbetween absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always\nfaithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting,\nsometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other; and as neither\npresent circumstances warranted, nor my present mood inclined me to\nmutiny, I observed careful obedience to St. John’s directions; and in\nten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen, side by side\nwith him.\nThe breeze was from the west: it came over the hills, sweet with scents\nof heath and rush; the sky was of stainless blue; the stream descending\nthe ravine, swelled with past spring rains, poured along plentiful and\nclear, catching golden gleams from the sun, and sapphire tints from the\nfirmament. As we advanced and left the track, we trod a soft turf,\nmossy fine and emerald green, minutely enamelled with a tiny white\nflower, and spangled with a star-like yellow blossom: the hills,\nmeantime, shut us quite in; for the glen, towards its head, wound to\ntheir very core.\n“Let us rest here,” said St. John, as we reached the first stragglers\nof a battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond which the beck\nrushed down a waterfall; and where, still a little farther, the\nmountain shook off turf and flower, had only heath for raiment and crag\nfor gem—where it exaggerated the wild to the savage, and exchanged the\nfresh for the frowning—where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude,\nand a last refuge for silence.\nI took a seat: St. John stood near me. He looked up the pass and down\nthe hollow; his glance wandered away with the stream, and returned to\ntraverse the unclouded heaven which coloured it: he removed his hat,\nlet the breeze stir his hair and kiss his brow. He seemed in communion\nwith the genius of the haunt: with his eye he bade farewell to\nsomething.\n“And I shall see it again,” he said aloud, “in dreams when I sleep by\nthe Ganges: and again in a more remote hour—when another slumber\novercomes me—on the shore of a darker stream!”\nStrange words of a strange love! An austere patriot’s passion for his\nfatherland! He sat down; for half-an-hour we never spoke; neither he to\nme nor I to him: that interval past, he recommenced—\n“Jane, I go in six weeks; I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman\nwhich sails on the 20th of June.”\n“God will protect you; for you have undertaken His work,” I answered.\n“Yes,” said he, “there is my glory and joy. I am the servant of an\ninfallible Master. I am not going out under human guidance, subject to\nthe defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms: my\nking, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect. It seems strange to\nme that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner,—to\njoin in the same enterprise.”\n“All have not your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble to wish\nto march with the strong.”\n“I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them: I address only such as\nare worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it.”\n“Those are few in number, and difficult to discover.”\n“You say truly; but when found, it is right to stir them up—to urge and\nexhort them to the effort—to show them what their gifts are, and why\nthey were given—to speak Heaven’s message in their ear,—to offer them,\ndirect from God, a place in the ranks of His chosen.”\n“If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own hearts\nbe the first to inform them of it?”\nI felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me: I\ntrembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once declare and\nrivet the spell.\n“And what does _your_ heart say?” demanded St. John.\n“My heart is mute,—my heart is mute,” I answered, struck and thrilled.\n“Then I must speak for it,” continued the deep, relentless voice.\n“Jane, come with me to India: come as my helpmeet and fellow-labourer.”\nThe glen and sky spun round: the hills heaved! It was as if I had heard\na summons from Heaven—as if a visionary messenger, like him of\nMacedonia, had enounced, “Come over and help us!” But I was no\napostle,—I could not behold the herald,—I could not receive his call.\n“Oh, St. John!” I cried, “have some mercy!”\nI appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed his duty,\nknew neither mercy nor remorse. He continued—\n“God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife. It is not\npersonal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for\nlabour, not for love. A missionary’s wife you must—shall be. You shall\nbe mine: I claim you—not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s\nservice.”\n“I am not fit for it: I have no vocation,” I said.\nHe had calculated on these first objections: he was not irritated by\nthem. Indeed, as he leaned back against the crag behind him, folded his\narms on his chest, and fixed his countenance, I saw he was prepared for\na long and trying opposition, and had taken in a stock of patience to\nlast him to its close—resolved, however, that that close should be\nconquest for him.\n“Humility, Jane,” said he, “is the groundwork of Christian virtues: you\nsay right that you are not fit for the work. Who is fit for it? Or who,\nthat ever was truly called, believed himself worthy of the summons? I,\nfor instance, am but dust and ashes. With St. Paul, I acknowledge\nmyself the chiefest of sinners; but I do not suffer this sense of my\npersonal vileness to daunt me. I know my Leader: that He is just as\nwell as mighty; and while He has chosen a feeble instrument to perform\na great task, He will, from the boundless stores of His providence,\nsupply the inadequacy of the means to the end. Think like me,\nJane—trust like me. It is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean on: do not\ndoubt but it will bear the weight of your human weakness.”\n“I do not understand a missionary life: I have never studied missionary\nlabours.”\n“There I, humble as I am, can give you the aid you want: I can set you\nyour task from hour to hour; stand by you always; help you from moment\nto moment. This I could do in the beginning: soon (for I know your\npowers) you would be as strong and apt as myself, and would not require\nmy help.”\n“But my powers—where are they for this undertaking? I do not feel them.\nNothing speaks or stirs in me while you talk. I am sensible of no light\nkindling—no life quickening—no voice counselling or cheering. Oh, I\nwish I could make you see how much my mind is at this moment like a\nrayless dungeon, with one shrinking fear fettered in its depths—the\nfear of being persuaded by you to attempt what I cannot accomplish!”\n“I have an answer for you—hear it. I have watched you ever since we\nfirst met: I have made you my study for ten months. I have proved you\nin that time by sundry tests: and what have I seen and elicited? In the\nvillage school I found you could perform well, punctually, uprightly,\nlabour uncongenial to your habits and inclinations; I saw you could\nperform it with capacity and tact: you could win while you controlled.\nIn the calm with which you learnt you had become suddenly rich, I read\na mind clear of the vice of Demas:—lucre had no undue power over you.\nIn the resolute readiness with which you cut your wealth into four\nshares, keeping but one to yourself, and relinquishing the three others\nto the claim of abstract justice, I recognised a soul that revelled in\nthe flame and excitement of sacrifice. In the tractability with which,\nat my wish, you forsook a study in which you were interested, and\nadopted another because it interested me; in the untiring assiduity\nwith which you have since persevered in it—in the unflagging energy and\nunshaken temper with which you have met its difficulties—I acknowledge\nthe complement of the qualities I seek. Jane, you are docile, diligent,\ndisinterested, faithful, constant, and courageous; very gentle, and\nvery heroic: cease to mistrust yourself—I can trust you unreservedly.\nAs a conductress of Indian schools, and a helper amongst Indian women,\nyour assistance will be to me invaluable.”\nMy iron shroud contracted round me; persuasion advanced with slow sure\nstep. Shut my eyes as I would, these last words of his succeeded in\nmaking the way, which had seemed blocked up, comparatively clear. My\nwork, which had appeared so vague, so hopelessly diffuse, condensed\nitself as he proceeded, and assumed a definite form under his shaping\nhand. He waited for an answer. I demanded a quarter of an hour to\nthink, before I again hazarded a reply.\n“Very willingly,” he rejoined; and rising, he strode a little distance\nup the pass, threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay\nstill.\nHe threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still\n“I _can_ do what he wants me to do: I am forced to see and acknowledge\nthat,” I meditated,—“that is, if life be spared me. But I feel mine is\nnot the existence to be long protracted under an Indian sun. What then?\nHe does not care for that: when my time came to die, he would resign\nme, in all serenity and sanctity, to the God who gave me. The case is\nvery plain before me. In leaving England, I should leave a loved but\nempty land—Mr. Rochester is not there; and if he were, what is, what\ncan that ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing\nso absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting\nsome impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him.\nOf course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life\nto replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly\nthe most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble\ncares and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void\nleft by uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say,\nYes—and yet I shudder. Alas! If I join St. John, I abandon half myself:\nif I go to India, I go to premature death. And how will the interval\nbetween leaving England for India, and India for the grave, be filled?\nOh, I know well! That, too, is very clear to my vision. By straining to\nsatisfy St. John till my sinews ache, I _shall_ satisfy him—to the\nfinest central point and farthest outward circle of his expectations.\nIf I _do_ go with him—if I _do_ make the sacrifice he urges, I will\nmake it absolutely: I will throw all on the altar—heart, vitals, the\nentire victim. He will never love me; but he shall approve me; I will\nshow him energies he has not yet seen, resources he has never\nsuspected. Yes, I can work as hard as he can, and with as little\ngrudging.\n“Consent, then, to his demand is possible: but for one item—one\ndreadful item. It is—that he asks me to be his wife, and has no more of\na husband’s heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock, down which\nthe stream is foaming in yonder gorge. He prizes me as a soldier would\na good weapon; and that is all. Unmarried to him, this would never\ngrieve me; but can I let him complete his calculations—coolly put into\npractice his plans—go through the wedding ceremony? Can I receive from\nhim the bridal ring, endure all the forms of love (which I doubt not he\nwould scrupulously observe) and know that the spirit was quite absent?\nCan I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a\nsacrifice made on principle? No: such a martyrdom would be monstrous. I\nwill never undergo it. As his sister, I might accompany him—not as his\nwife: I will tell him so.”\nI looked towards the knoll: there he lay, still as a prostrate column;\nhis face turned to me: his eye beaming watchful and keen. He started to\nhis feet and approached me.\n“I am ready to go to India, if I may go free.”\n“Your answer requires a commentary,” he said; “it is not clear.”\n“You have hitherto been my adopted brother—I, your adopted sister: let\nus continue as such: you and I had better not marry.”\nHe shook his head. “Adopted fraternity will not do in this case. If you\nwere my real sister it would be different: I should take you, and seek\nno wife. But as it is, either our union must be consecrated and sealed\nby marriage, or it cannot exist: practical obstacles oppose themselves\nto any other plan. Do you not see it, Jane? Consider a moment—your\nstrong sense will guide you.”\nI did consider; and still my sense, such as it was, directed me only to\nthe fact that we did not love each other as man and wife should: and\ntherefore it inferred we ought not to marry. I said so. “St. John,” I\nreturned, “I regard you as a brother—you, me as a sister: so let us\ncontinue.”\n“We cannot—we cannot,” he answered, with short, sharp determination:\n“it would not do. You have said you will go with me to India:\nremember—you have said that.”\n“Conditionally.”\n“Well—well. To the main point—the departure with me from England, the\nco-operation with me in my future labours—you do not object. You have\nalready as good as put your hand to the plough: you are too consistent\nto withdraw it. You have but one end to keep in view—how the work you\nhave undertaken can best be done. Simplify your complicated interests,\nfeelings, thoughts, wishes, aims; merge all considerations in one\npurpose: that of fulfilling with effect—with power—the mission of your\ngreat Master. To do so, you must have a coadjutor: not a brother—that\nis a loose tie—but a husband. I, too, do not want a sister: a sister\nmight any day be taken from me. I want a wife: the sole helpmeet I can\ninfluence efficiently in life, and retain absolutely till death.”\nI shuddered as he spoke: I felt his influence in my marrow—his hold on\nmy limbs.\n“Seek one elsewhere than in me, St. John: seek one fitted to you.”\n“One fitted to my purpose, you mean—fitted to my vocation. Again I tell\nyou it is not the insignificant private individual—the mere man, with\nthe man’s selfish senses—I wish to mate: it is the missionary.”\n“And I will give the missionary my energies—it is all he wants—but not\nmyself: that would be only adding the husk and shell to the kernel. For\nthem he has no use: I retain them.”\n“You cannot—you ought not. Do you think God will be satisfied with half\nan oblation? Will He accept a mutilated sacrifice? It is the cause of\nGod I advocate: it is under His standard I enlist you. I cannot accept\non His behalf a divided allegiance: it must be entire.”\n“Oh! I will give my heart to God,” I said. “_You_ do not want it.”\nI will not swear, reader, that there was not something of repressed\nsarcasm both in the tone in which I uttered this sentence, and in the\nfeeling that accompanied it. I had silently feared St. John till now,\nbecause I had not understood him. He had held me in awe, because he had\nheld me in doubt. How much of him was saint, how much mortal, I could\nnot heretofore tell: but revelations were being made in this\nconference: the analysis of his nature was proceeding before my eyes. I\nsaw his fallibilities: I comprehended them. I understood that, sitting\nthere where I did, on the bank of heath, and with that handsome form\nbefore me, I sat at the feet of a man, erring as I. The veil fell from\nhis hardness and despotism. Having felt in him the presence of these\nqualities, I felt his imperfection and took courage. I was with an\nequal—one with whom I might argue—one whom, if I saw good, I might\nresist.\nHe was silent after I had uttered the last sentence, and I presently\nrisked an upward glance at his countenance. His eye, bent on me,\nexpressed at once stern surprise and keen inquiry. “Is she sarcastic,\nand sarcastic to _me!_” it seemed to say. “What does this signify?”\n“Do not let us forget that this is a solemn matter,” he said ere long;\n“one of which we may neither think nor talk lightly without sin. I\ntrust, Jane, you are in earnest when you say you will serve your heart\nto God: it is all I want. Once wrench your heart from man, and fix it\non your Maker, the advancement of that Maker’s spiritual kingdom on\nearth will be your chief delight and endeavour; you will be ready to do\nat once whatever furthers that end. You will see what impetus would be\ngiven to your efforts and mine by our physical and mental union in\nmarriage: the only union that gives a character of permanent conformity\nto the destinies and designs of human beings; and, passing over all\nminor caprices—all trivial difficulties and delicacies of feeling—all\nscruple about the degree, kind, strength or tenderness of mere personal\ninclination—you will hasten to enter into that union at once.”\n“Shall I?” I said briefly; and I looked at his features, beautiful in\ntheir harmony, but strangely formidable in their still severity; at his\nbrow, commanding but not open; at his eyes, bright and deep and\nsearching, but never soft; at his tall imposing figure; and fancied\nmyself in idea _his wife_. Oh! it would never do! As his curate, his\ncomrade, all would be right: I would cross oceans with him in that\ncapacity; toil under Eastern suns, in Asian deserts with him in that\noffice; admire and emulate his courage and devotion and vigour;\naccommodate quietly to his masterhood; smile undisturbed at his\nineradicable ambition; discriminate the Christian from the man:\nprofoundly esteem the one, and freely forgive the other. I should\nsuffer often, no doubt, attached to him only in this capacity: my body\nwould be under rather a stringent yoke, but my heart and mind would be\nfree. I should still have my unblighted self to turn to: my natural\nunenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of loneliness.\nThere would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which\nhe never came, and sentiments growing there fresh and sheltered which\nhis austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march\ntrample down: but as his wife—at his side always, and always\nrestrained, and always checked—forced to keep the fire of my nature\ncontinually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry,\nthough the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital—_this_ would be\nunendurable.\n“St. John!” I exclaimed, when I had got so far in my meditation.\n“Well?” he answered icily.\n“I repeat I freely consent to go with you as your fellow-missionary,\nbut not as your wife; I cannot marry you and become part of you.”\n“A part of me you must become,” he answered steadily; “otherwise the\nwhole bargain is void. How can I, a man not yet thirty, take out with\nme to India a girl of nineteen, unless she be married to me? How can we\nbe for ever together—sometimes in solitudes, sometimes amidst savage\ntribes—and unwed?”\n“Very well,” I said shortly; “under the circumstances, quite as well as\nif I were either your real sister, or a man and a clergyman like\nyourself.”\n“It is known that you are not my sister; I cannot introduce you as\nsuch: to attempt it would be to fasten injurious suspicions on us both.\nAnd for the rest, though you have a man’s vigorous brain, you have a\nwoman’s heart and—it would not do.”\n“It would do,” I affirmed with some disdain, “perfectly well. I have a\nwoman’s heart, but not where you are concerned; for you I have only a\ncomrade’s constancy; a fellow-soldier’s frankness, fidelity,\nfraternity, if you like; a neophyte’s respect and submission to his\nhierophant: nothing more—don’t fear.”\n“It is what I want,” he said, speaking to himself; “it is just what I\nwant. And there are obstacles in the way: they must be hewn down. Jane,\nyou would not repent marrying me—be certain of that; we _must_ be\nmarried. I repeat it: there is no other way; and undoubtedly enough of\nlove would follow upon marriage to render the union right even in your\neyes.”\n“I scorn your idea of love,” I could not help saying, as I rose up and\nstood before him, leaning my back against the rock. “I scorn the\ncounterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when\nyou offer it.”\nHe looked at me fixedly, compressing his well-cut lips while he did so.\nWhether he was incensed or surprised, or what, it was not easy to tell:\nhe could command his countenance thoroughly.\n“I scarcely expected to hear that expression from you,” he said: “I\nthink I have done and uttered nothing to deserve scorn.”\nI was touched by his gentle tone, and overawed by his high, calm mien.\n“Forgive me the words, St. John; but it is your own fault that I have\nbeen roused to speak so unguardedly. You have introduced a topic on\nwhich our natures are at variance—a topic we should never discuss: the\nvery name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality\nwere required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin,\nabandon your scheme of marriage—forget it.”\n“No,” said he; “it is a long-cherished scheme, and the only one which\ncan secure my great end: but I shall urge you no further at present.\nTo-morrow, I leave home for Cambridge: I have many friends there to\nwhom I should wish to say farewell. I shall be absent a fortnight—take\nthat space of time to consider my offer: and do not forget that if you\nreject it, it is not me you deny, but God. Through my means, He opens\nto you a noble career; as my wife only can you enter upon it. Refuse to\nbe my wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease\nand barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case you should be numbered\nwith those who have denied the faith, and are worse than infidels!”\nHe had done. Turning from me, he once more\n“Looked to river, looked to hill.”\nBut this time his feelings were all pent in his heart: I was not worthy\nto hear them uttered. As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in\nhis iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an\naustere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected\nsubmission—the disapprobation of a cool, inflexible judgment, which has\ndetected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to\nsympathise: in short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into\nobedience: it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with\nmy perversity, and allowed so long a space for reflection and\nrepentance.\nThat night, after he had kissed his sisters, he thought proper to\nforget even to shake hands with me, but left the room in silence.\nI—who, though I had no love, had much friendship for him—was hurt by\nthe marked omission: so much hurt that tears started to my eyes.\n“I see you and St. John have been quarrelling, Jane,” said Diana,\n“during your walk on the moor. But go after him; he is now lingering in\nthe passage expecting you—he will make it up.”\nI have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather\nbe happy than dignified; and I ran after him—he stood at the foot of\nthe stairs.\n“Good-night, St. John,” said I.\n“Good-night, Jane,” he replied calmly.\n“Then shake hands,” I added.\nWhat a cold, loose touch, he impressed on my fingers! He was deeply\ndispleased by what had occurred that day; cordiality would not warm,\nnor tears move him. No happy reconciliation was to be had with him—no\ncheering smile or generous word: but still the Christian was patient\nand placid; and when I asked him if he forgave me, he answered that he\nwas not in the habit of cherishing the remembrance of vexation; that he\nhad nothing to forgive, not having been offended.\nAnd with that answer he left me. I would much rather he had knocked me\ndown.\n', 'He did not leave for Cambridge the next day, as he had said he would.\nHe deferred his departure a whole week, and during that time he made me\nfeel what severe punishment a good yet stern, a conscientious yet\nimplacable man can inflict on one who has offended him. Without one\novert act of hostility, one upbraiding word, he contrived to impress me\nmomently with the conviction that I was put beyond the pale of his\nfavour.\nNot that St. John harboured a spirit of unchristian vindictiveness—not\nthat he would have injured a hair of my head, if it had been fully in\nhis power to do so. Both by nature and principle, he was superior to\nthe mean gratification of vengeance: he had forgiven me for saying I\nscorned him and his love, but he had not forgotten the words; and as\nlong as he and I lived he never would forget them. I saw by his look,\nwhen he turned to me, that they were always written on the air between\nme and him; whenever I spoke, they sounded in my voice to his ear, and\ntheir echo toned every answer he gave me.\nHe did not abstain from conversing with me: he even called me as usual\neach morning to join him at his desk; and I fear the corrupt man within\nhim had a pleasure unimparted to, and unshared by, the pure Christian,\nin evincing with what skill he could, while acting and speaking\napparently just as usual, extract from every deed and every phrase the\nspirit of interest and approval which had formerly communicated a\ncertain austere charm to his language and manner. To me, he was in\nreality become no longer flesh, but marble; his eye was a cold, bright,\nblue gem; his tongue a speaking instrument—nothing more.\nAll this was torture to me—refined, lingering torture. It kept up a\nslow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief, which\nharassed and crushed me altogether. I felt how—if I were his wife, this\ngood man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me, without\ndrawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own\ncrystal conscience the faintest stain of crime. Especially I felt this\nwhen I made any attempt to propitiate him. No ruth met my ruth. _He_\nexperienced no suffering from estrangement—no yearning after\nreconciliation; and though, more than once, my fast falling tears\nblistered the page over which we both bent, they produced no more\neffect on him than if his heart had been really a matter of stone or\nmetal. To his sisters, meantime, he was somewhat kinder than usual: as\nif afraid that mere coldness would not sufficiently convince me how\ncompletely I was banished and banned, he added the force of contrast;\nand this I am sure he did not by malice, but on principle.\nThe night before he left home, happening to see him walking in the\ngarden about sunset, and remembering, as I looked at him, that this\nman, alienated as he now was, had once saved my life, and that we were\nnear relations, I was moved to make a last attempt to regain his\nfriendship. I went out and approached him as he stood leaning over the\nlittle gate; I spoke to the point at once.\n“St. John, I am unhappy because you are still angry with me. Let us be\nfriends.”\n“I hope we are friends,” was the unmoved reply; while he still watched\nthe rising of the moon, which he had been contemplating as I\napproached.\n“No, St. John, we are not friends as we were. You know that.”\n“Are we not? That is wrong. For my part, I wish you no ill and all\ngood.”\n“I believe you, St. John; for I am sure you are incapable of wishing\nany one ill; but, as I am your kinswoman, I should desire somewhat more\nof affection than that sort of general philanthropy you extend to mere\nstrangers.”\n“Of course,” he said. “Your wish is reasonable, and I am far from\nregarding you as a stranger.”\nThis, spoken in a cool, tranquil tone, was mortifying and baffling\nenough. Had I attended to the suggestions of pride and ire, I should\nimmediately have left him; but something worked within me more strongly\nthan those feelings could. I deeply venerated my cousin’s talent and\nprinciple. His friendship was of value to me: to lose it tried me\nseverely. I would not so soon relinquish the attempt to reconquer it.\n“Must we part in this way, St. John? And when you go to India, will you\nleave me so, without a kinder word than you have yet spoken?”\nHe now turned quite from the moon and faced me.\n“When I go to India, Jane, will I leave you! What! do you not go to\nIndia?”\n“You said I could not unless I married you.”\n“And you will not marry me! You adhere to that resolution?”\nReader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put\ninto the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche\nis in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their\ndispleasure?\n“No. St. John, I will not marry you. I adhere to my resolution.”\nThe avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward, but it did not yet\ncrash down.\n“Once more, why this refusal?” he asked.\n“Formerly,” I answered, “because you did not love me; now, I reply,\nbecause you almost hate me. If I were to marry you, you would kill me.\nYou are killing me now.”\nHis lips and cheeks turned white—quite white.\n“_I should kill you_—_I am killing you_? Your words are such as ought\nnot to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue. They betray an\nunfortunate state of mind: they merit severe reproof: they would seem\ninexcusable, but that it is the duty of man to forgive his fellow even\nuntil seventy-and-seven times.”\nI had finished the business now. While earnestly wishing to erase from\nhis mind the trace of my former offence, I had stamped on that\ntenacious surface another and far deeper impression: I had burnt it in.\n“Now you will indeed hate me,” I said. “It is useless to attempt to\nconciliate you: I see I have made an eternal enemy of you.”\nA fresh wrong did these words inflict: the worse, because they touched\non the truth. That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary spasm. I knew\nthe steely ire I had whetted. I was heart-wrung.\n“You utterly misinterpret my words,” I said, at once seizing his hand:\n“I have no intention to grieve or pain you—indeed, I have not.”\nMost bitterly he smiled—most decidedly he withdrew his hand from mine.\n“And now you recall your promise, and will not go to India at all, I\npresume?” said he, after a considerable pause.\n“Yes, I will, as your assistant,” I answered.\nA very long silence succeeded. What struggle there was in him between\nNature and Grace in this interval, I cannot tell: only singular gleams\nscintillated in his eyes, and strange shadows passed over his face. He\nspoke at last.\n“I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your age\nproposing to accompany abroad a single man of mine. I proved it to you\nin such terms as, I should have thought, would have prevented your ever\nagain alluding to the plan. That you have done so, I regret—for your\nsake.”\nI interrupted him. Anything like a tangible reproach gave me courage at\nonce. “Keep to common sense, St. John: you are verging on nonsense. You\npretend to be shocked by what I have said. You are not really shocked:\nfor, with your superior mind, you cannot be either so dull or so\nconceited as to misunderstand my meaning. I say again, I will be your\ncurate, if you like, but never your wife.”\nAgain he turned lividly pale; but, as before, controlled his passion\nperfectly. He answered emphatically but calmly—\n“A female curate, who is not my wife, would never suit me. With me,\nthen, it seems, you cannot go: but if you are sincere in your offer, I\nwill, while in town, speak to a married missionary, whose wife needs a\ncoadjutor. Your own fortune will make you independent of the Society’s\naid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your\npromise and deserting the band you engaged to join.”\nNow I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise\nor entered into any engagement; and this language was all much too hard\nand much too despotic for the occasion. I replied—\n“There is no dishonour, no breach of promise, no desertion in the case.\nI am not under the slightest obligation to go to India, especially with\nstrangers. With you I would have ventured much, because I admire,\nconfide in, and, as a sister, I love you; but I am convinced that, go\nwhen and with whom I would, I should not live long in that climate.”\n“Ah! you are afraid of yourself,” he said, curling his lip.\n“I am. God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as you wish\nme would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing suicide.\nMoreover, before I definitively resolve on quitting England, I will\nknow for certain whether I cannot be of greater use by remaining in it\nthan by leaving it.”\n“What do you mean?”\n“It would be fruitless to attempt to explain; but there is a point on\nwhich I have long endured painful doubt, and I can go nowhere till by\nsome means that doubt is removed.”\n“I know where your heart turns and to what it clings. The interest you\ncherish is lawless and unconsecrated. Long since you ought to have\ncrushed it: now you should blush to allude to it. You think of Mr.\nRochester?”\nIt was true. I confessed it by silence.\n“Are you going to seek Mr. Rochester?”\n“I must find out what is become of him.”\n“It remains for me, then,” he said, “to remember you in my prayers, and\nto entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may not indeed\nbecome a castaway. I had thought I recognised in you one of the chosen.\nBut God sees not as man sees: _His_ will be done—”\nHe opened the gate, passed through it, and strayed away down the glen.\nHe was soon out of sight.\nOn re-entering the parlour, I found Diana standing at the window,\nlooking very thoughtful. Diana was a great deal taller than I: she put\nher hand on my shoulder, and, stooping, examined my face.\n“Jane,” she said, “you are always agitated and pale now. I am sure\nthere is something the matter. Tell me what business St. John and you\nhave on hands. I have watched you this half hour from the window; you\nmust forgive my being such a spy, but for a long time I have fancied I\nhardly know what. St. John is a strange being—”\nShe paused—I did not speak: soon she resumed—\n“That brother of mine cherishes peculiar views of some sort respecting\nyou, I am sure: he has long distinguished you by a notice and interest\nhe never showed to any one else—to what end? I wish he loved you—does\nhe, Jane?”\nI put her cool hand to my hot forehead; “No, Die, not one whit.”\n“Then why does he follow you so with his eyes, and get you so\nfrequently alone with him, and keep you so continually at his side?\nMary and I had both concluded he wished you to marry him.”\n“He does—he has asked me to be his wife.”\nDiana clapped her hands. “That is just what we hoped and thought! And\nyou will marry him, Jane, won’t you? And then he will stay in England.”\n“Far from that, Diana; his sole idea in proposing to me is to procure a\nfitting fellow-labourer in his Indian toils.”\n“What! He wishes you to go to India?”\n“Yes.”\n“Madness!” she exclaimed. “You would not live three months there, I am\ncertain. You never shall go: you have not consented, have you, Jane?”\n“I have refused to marry him—”\n“And have consequently displeased him?” she suggested.\n“Deeply: he will never forgive me, I fear: yet I offered to accompany\nhim as his sister.”\n“It was frantic folly to do so, Jane. Think of the task you\nundertook—one of incessant fatigue, where fatigue kills even the\nstrong, and you are weak. St. John—you know him—would urge you to\nimpossibilities: with him there would be no permission to rest during\nthe hot hours; and unfortunately, I have noticed, whatever he exacts,\nyou force yourself to perform. I am astonished you found courage to\nrefuse his hand. You do not love him then, Jane?”\n“Not as a husband.”\n“Yet he is a handsome fellow.”\n“And I am so plain, you see, Die. We should never suit.”\n“Plain! You? Not at all. You are much too pretty, as well as too good,\nto be grilled alive in Calcutta.” And again she earnestly conjured me\nto give up all thoughts of going out with her brother.\n“I must indeed,” I said; “for when just now I repeated the offer of\nserving him for a deacon, he expressed himself shocked at my want of\ndecency. He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in proposing\nto accompany him unmarried: as if I had not from the first hoped to\nfind in him a brother, and habitually regarded him as such.”\n“What makes you say he does not love you, Jane?”\n“You should hear himself on the subject. He has again and again\nexplained that it is not himself, but his office he wishes to mate. He\nhas told me I am formed for labour—not for love: which is true, no\ndoubt. But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows that\nI am not formed for marriage. Would it not be strange, Die, to be\nchained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool?”\n“Insupportable—unnatural—out of the question!”\n“And then,” I continued, “though I have only sisterly affection for him\nnow, yet, if forced to be his wife, I can imagine the possibility of\nconceiving an inevitable, strange, torturing kind of love for him,\nbecause he is so talented; and there is often a certain heroic grandeur\nin his look, manner, and conversation. In that case, my lot would\nbecome unspeakably wretched. He would not want me to love him; and if I\nshowed the feeling, he would make me sensible that it was a\nsuperfluity, unrequired by him, unbecoming in me. I know he would.”\n“And yet St. John is a good man,” said Diana.\n“He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings\nand claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. It is\nbetter, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way, lest,\nin his progress, he should trample them down. Here he comes! I will\nleave you, Diana.” And I hastened upstairs as I saw him entering the\ngarden.\nBut I was forced to meet him again at supper. During that meal he\nappeared just as composed as usual. I had thought he would hardly speak\nto me, and I was certain he had given up the pursuit of his matrimonial\nscheme: the sequel showed I was mistaken on both points. He addressed\nme precisely in his ordinary manner, or what had, of late, been his\nordinary manner—one scrupulously polite. No doubt he had invoked the\nhelp of the Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had roused in him, and\nnow believed he had forgiven me once more.\nFor the evening reading before prayers, he selected the twenty-first\nchapter of Revelation. It was at all times pleasant to listen while\nfrom his lips fell the words of the Bible: never did his fine voice\nsound at once so sweet and full—never did his manner become so\nimpressive in its noble simplicity, as when he delivered the oracles of\nGod: and to-night that voice took a more solemn tone—that manner a more\nthrilling meaning—as he sat in the midst of his household circle (the\nMay moon shining in through the uncurtained window, and rendering\nalmost unnecessary the light of the candle on the table): as he sat\nthere, bending over the great old Bible, and described from its page\nthe vision of the new heaven and the new earth—told how God would come\nto dwell with men, how He would wipe away all tears from their eyes,\nand promised that there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor\ncrying, nor any more pain, because the former things were passed away.\nThe succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them: especially\nas I felt, by the slight, indescribable alteration in sound, that in\nuttering them, his eye had turned on me.\n“He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God,\nand he shall be my son. But,” was slowly, distinctly read, “the\nfearful, the unbelieving, &c., shall have their part in the lake which\nburneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”\nHenceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me.\nA calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, marked his\nenunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter. The reader\nbelieved his name was already written in the Lamb’s book of life, and\nhe yearned after the hour which should admit him to the city to which\nthe kings of the earth bring their glory and honour; which has no need\nof sun or moon to shine in it, because the glory of God lightens it,\nand the Lamb is the light thereof.\nIn the prayer following the chapter, all his energy gathered—all his\nstern zeal woke: he was in deep earnest, wrestling with God, and\nresolved on a conquest. He supplicated strength for the weak-hearted;\nguidance for wanderers from the fold: a return, even at the eleventh\nhour, for those whom the temptations of the world and the flesh were\nluring from the narrow path. He asked, he urged, he claimed the boon of\na brand snatched from the burning. Earnestness is ever deeply solemn:\nfirst, as I listened to that prayer, I wondered at his; then, when it\ncontinued and rose, I was touched by it, and at last awed. He felt the\ngreatness and goodness of his purpose so sincerely: others who heard\nhim plead for it, could not but feel it too.\nThe prayer over, we took leave of him: he was to go at a very early\nhour in the morning. Diana and Mary having kissed him, left the room—in\ncompliance, I think, with a whispered hint from him: I tendered my\nhand, and wished him a pleasant journey.\n“Thank you, Jane. As I said, I shall return from Cambridge in a\nfortnight: that space, then, is yet left you for reflection. If I\nlistened to human pride, I should say no more to you of marriage with\nme; but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my first aim—to\ndo all things to the glory of God. My Master was long-suffering: so\nwill I be. I cannot give you up to perdition as a vessel of wrath:\nrepent—resolve, while there is yet time. Remember, we are bid to work\nwhile it is day—warned that ‘the night cometh when no man shall work.’\nRemember the fate of Dives, who had his good things in this life. God\ngive you strength to choose that better part which shall not be taken\nfrom you!”\nHe laid his hand on my head as he uttered the last words. He had spoken\nearnestly, mildly: his look was not, indeed, that of a lover beholding\nhis mistress, but it was that of a pastor recalling his wandering\nsheep—or better, of a guardian angel watching the soul for which he is\nresponsible. All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not;\nwhether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots—provided only they be\nsincere—have their sublime moments, when they subdue and rule. I felt\nveneration for St. John—veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me\nat once to the point I had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease\nstruggling with him—to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf\nof his existence, and there lose my own. I was almost as hard beset by\nhim now as I had been once before, in a different way, by another. I\nwas a fool both times. To have yielded then would have been an error of\nprinciple; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment. So\nI think at this hour, when I look back to the crisis through the quiet\nmedium of time: I was unconscious of folly at the instant.\nI stood motionless under my hierophant’s touch. My refusals were\nforgotten—my fears overcome—my wrestlings paralysed. The\nImpossible—_i.e._, my marriage with St. John—was fast becoming the\nPossible. All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep. Religion\ncalled—Angels beckoned—God commanded—life rolled together like a\nscroll—death’s gates opening, showed eternity beyond: it seemed, that\nfor safety and bliss there, all here might be sacrificed in a second.\nThe dim room was full of visions.\n“Could you decide now?” asked the missionary. The inquiry was put in\ngentle tones: he drew me to him as gently. Oh, that gentleness! how far\nmore potent is it than force! I could resist St. John’s wrath: I grew\npliant as a reed under his kindness. Yet I knew all the time, if I\nyielded now, I should not the less be made to repent, some day, of my\nformer rebellion. His nature was not changed by one hour of solemn\nprayer: it was only elevated.\n“I could decide if I were but certain,” I answered: “were I but\nconvinced that it is God’s will I should marry you, I could vow to\nmarry you here and now—come afterwards what would!”\n“My prayers are heard!” ejaculated St. John. He pressed his hand firmer\non my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm,\n_almost_ as if he loved me (I say _almost_—I knew the difference—for I\nhad felt what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love out\nof the question, and thought only of duty). I contended with my inward\ndimness of vision, before which clouds yet rolled. I sincerely, deeply,\nfervently longed to do what was right; and only that. “Show me, show me\nthe path!” I entreated of Heaven. I was excited more than I had ever\nbeen; and whether what followed was the effect of excitement the reader\nshall judge.\nAll the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John and myself,\nwere now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out: the room was\nfull of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick: I heard its throb.\nSuddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it\nthrough, and passed at once to my head and extremities. The feeling was\nnot like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as\nstartling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto\nhad been but torpor, from which they were now summoned and forced to\nwake. They rose expectant: eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered\non my bones.\n“What have you heard? What do you see?” asked St. John. I saw nothing,\nbut I heard a voice somewhere cry—\n“Jane! Jane! Jane!”—nothing more.\n“O God! what is it?” I gasped.\nI might have said, “Where is it?” for it did not seem in the room—nor\nin the house—nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air—nor from\nunder the earth—nor from overhead. I had heard it—where, or whence, for\never impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being—a known,\nloved, well-remembered voice—that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it\nspoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.\n“I am coming!” I cried. “Wait for me! Oh, I will come!” I flew to the\ndoor and looked into the passage: it was dark. I ran out into the\ngarden: it was void.\n“Where are you?” I exclaimed.\nThe hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back—“Where are\nyou?” I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs: all was moorland\nloneliness and midnight hush.\n“Down superstition!” I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the\nblack yew at the gate. “This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft:\nit is the work of nature. She was roused, and did—no miracle—but her\nbest.”\nI broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained me. It\nwas _my_ time to assume ascendency. _My_ powers were in play and in\nforce. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave\nme: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is energy\nto command well enough, obedience never fails. I mounted to my chamber;\nlocked myself in; fell on my knees; and prayed in my way—a different\nway to St. John’s, but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to\npenetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in\ngratitude at His feet. I rose from the thanksgiving—took a resolve—and\nlay down, unscared, enlightened—eager but for the daylight.\n', 'The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or two\nwith arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe, in the\norder wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief absence.\nMeantime, I heard St. John quit his room. He stopped at my door: I\nfeared he would knock—no, but a slip of paper was passed under the\ndoor. I took it up. It bore these words—\n“You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little\nlonger, you would have laid your hand on the Christian’s cross and the\nangel’s crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return this\nday fortnight. Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not into\ntemptation: the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, I see, is\nweak. I shall pray for you hourly.—Yours, ST. JOHN.”\n“My spirit,” I answered mentally, “is willing to do what is right; and\nmy flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven,\nwhen once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate, it shall be\nstrong enough to search—inquire—to grope an outlet from this cloud of\ndoubt, and find the open day of certainty.”\nIt was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly: rain\nbeat fast on my casement. I heard the front-door open, and St. John\npass out. Looking through the window, I saw him traverse the garden. He\ntook the way over the misty moors in the direction of Whitcross—there\nhe would meet the coach.\n“In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin,”\nthought I: “I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too have some to\nsee and ask after in England, before I depart for ever.”\nIt wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the interval in\nwalking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which had\ngiven my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward sensation I\nhad experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable\nstrangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned\nwhence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in _me_—not in the\nexternal world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression—a delusion? I\ncould not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. The\nwondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the\nfoundations of Paul and Silas’s prison; it had opened the doors of the\nsoul’s cell and loosed its bands—it had wakened it out of its sleep,\nwhence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a\ncry on my startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit,\nwhich neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the\nsuccess of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of\nthe cumbrous body.\n“Ere many days,” I said, as I terminated my musings, “I will know\nsomething of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters\nhave proved of no avail—personal inquiry shall replace them.”\nAt breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a journey,\nand should be absent at least four days.\n“Alone, Jane?” they asked.\n“Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for some\ntime been uneasy.”\nThey might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they had\nbelieved me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I had\noften said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they abstained\nfrom comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was well\nenough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I replied, that\nnothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon to alleviate.\nIt was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled with no\ninquiries—no surmises. Having once explained to them that I could not\nnow be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely acquiesced in\nthe silence with which I pursued them, according to me the privilege of\nfree action I should under similar circumstances have accorded them.\nI left Moor House at three o’clock P.M., and soon after four I stood at\nthe foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival of the\ncoach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst the silence of\nthose solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great\ndistance. It was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted\none summer evening on this very spot—how desolate, and hopeless, and\nobjectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I entered—not now obliged to part\nwith my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on\nthe road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.\nIt was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from Whitcross\non a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday morning\nthe coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the\nmidst of scenery whose green hedges and large fields and low pastoral\nhills (how mild of feature and verdant of hue compared with the stern\nNorth-Midland moors of Morton!) met my eye like the lineaments of a\nonce familiar face. Yes, I knew the character of this landscape: I was\nsure we were near my bourne.\n“How far is Thornfield Hall from here?” I asked of the ostler.\n“Just two miles, ma’am, across the fields.”\n“My journey is closed,” I thought to myself. I got out of the coach,\ngave a box I had into the ostler’s charge, to be kept till I called for\nit; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going: the\nbrightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read in gilt\nletters, “The Rochester Arms.” My heart leapt up: I was already on my\nmaster’s very lands. It fell again: the thought struck it:—\n“Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you\nknow: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten,\nwho besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do\nwith him: you dare not speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost\nyour labour—you had better go no farther,” urged the monitor. “Ask\ninformation of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek:\nthey can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that man, and inquire if\nMr. Rochester be at home.”\nThe suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on\nit. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong\ndoubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the\nray of her star. There was the stile before me—the very fields through\nwhich I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted with a revengeful fury\ntracking and scourging me, on the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I\nwell knew what course I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of\nthem. How fast I walked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to\ncatch the first view of the well-known woods! With what feelings I\nwelcomed single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill\nbetween them!\nAt last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing broke\nthe morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I hastened.\nAnother field crossed—a lane threaded—and there were the courtyard\nwalls—the back offices: the house itself, the rookery still hid. “My\nfirst view of it shall be in front,” I determined, “where its bold\nbattlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can single\nout my master’s very window: perhaps he will be standing at it—he rises\nearly: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in\nfront. Could I but see him!—but a moment! Surely, in that case, I\nshould not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell—I am not certain.\nAnd if I did—what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt by\nmy once more tasting the life his glance can give me? I rave: perhaps\nat this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or on the\ntideless sea of the south.”\nI had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard—turned its angle:\nthere was a gate just there, opening into the meadow, between two stone\npillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar I could peep\nround quietly at the full front of the mansion. I advanced my head with\nprecaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom window-blinds were yet\ndrawn up: battlements, windows, long front—all from this sheltered\nstation were at my command.\nThe crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this survey.\nI wonder what they thought. They must have considered I was very\ncareful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold and\nreckless. A peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from my\nniche and a straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in\nfront of the great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it.\n“What affectation of diffidence was this at first?” they might have\ndemanded; “what stupid regardlessness now?”\nHear an illustration, reader.\nA lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a\nglimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the\ngrass, careful to make no sound; he pauses—fancying she has stirred: he\nwithdraws: not for worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again\nadvances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he\nlifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of\nbeauty—warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their\nfirst glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and\nvehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since,\ntouch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden,\nand gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he\nno longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter—by any movement he\ncan make. He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone\ndead.\nI looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened\nruin.\nNo need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed!—to peep up at chamber\nlattices, fearing life was astir behind them! No need to listen for\ndoors opening—to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk! The\nlawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the portal yawned void. The\nfront was, as I had once seen it in a dream, but a shell-like wall,\nvery high and very fragile-looking, perforated with paneless windows:\nno roof, no battlements, no chimneys—all had crashed in.\nAnd there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a lonesome\nwild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here had never\nreceived an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a church\naisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by what fate the Hall had\nfallen—by conflagration: but how kindled? What story belonged to this\ndisaster? What loss, besides mortar and marble and wood-work had\nfollowed upon it? Had life been wrecked as well as property? If so,\nwhose? Dreadful question: there was no one here to answer it—not even\ndumb sign, mute token.\nIn wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated\ninterior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late\noccurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that void\narch, winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for, amidst the\ndrenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation: grass and\nweed grew here and there between the stones and fallen rafters. And oh!\nwhere meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck? In what land? Under\nwhat auspices? My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey church tower\nnear the gates, and I asked, “Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing\nthe shelter of his narrow marble house?”\nSome answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere but\nat the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself brought\nmy breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the door and sit\ndown: I had some questions to ask him. But when he complied, I scarcely\nknew how to begin; such horror had I of the possible answers. And yet\nthe spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure\nfor a tale of misery. The host was a respectable-looking, middle-aged\nman.\n“You know Thornfield Hall, of course?” I managed to say at last.\n“Yes, ma’am; I lived there once.”\n“Did you?” Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me.\n“I was the late Mr. Rochester’s butler,” he added.\nThe late! I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I had been\ntrying to evade.\n“The late!” I gasped. “Is he dead?”\n“I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward’s father,” he explained. I\nbreathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured by these words\nthat Mr. Edward—_my_ Mr. Rochester (God bless him, wherever he\nwas!)—was at least alive: was, in short, “the present gentleman.”\nGladdening words! It seemed I could hear all that was to come—whatever\nthe disclosures might be—with comparative tranquillity. Since he was\nnot in the grave, I could bear, I thought, to learn that he was at the\nAntipodes.\n“Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?” I asked, knowing, of\ncourse, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring the\ndirect question as to where he really was.\n“No, ma’am—oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a stranger\nin these parts, or you would have heard what happened last\nautumn,—Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about\nharvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable\nproperty destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be saved. The\nfire broke out at dead of night, and before the engines arrived from\nMillcote, the building was one mass of flame. It was a terrible\nspectacle: I witnessed it myself.”\n“At dead of night!” I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour of fatality\nat Thornfield. “Was it known how it originated?” I demanded.\n“They guessed, ma’am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was\nascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware,” he continued,\nedging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, “that\nthere was a lady—a—a lunatic, kept in the house?”\n“I have heard something of it.”\n“She was kept in very close confinement, ma’am; people even for some\nyears was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw her: they\nonly knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what\nshe was it was difficult to conjecture. They said Mr. Edward had\nbrought her from abroad, and some believed she had been his mistress.\nBut a queer thing happened a year since—a very queer thing.”\nI feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to the\nmain fact.\n“And this lady?”\n“This lady, ma’am,” he answered, “turned out to be Mr. Rochester’s\nwife! The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There was a\nyoung lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in—”\n“But the fire,” I suggested.\n“I’m coming to that, ma’am—that Mr. Edward fell in love with. The\nservants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: he was\nafter her continually. They used to watch him—servants will, you know,\nma’am—and he set store on her past everything: for all, nobody but him\nthought her so very handsome. She was a little small thing, they say,\nalmost like a child. I never saw her myself; but I’ve heard Leah, the\nhouse-maid, tell of her. Leah liked her well enough. Mr. Rochester was\nabout forty, and this governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen\nof his age fall in love with girls, they are often like as if they were\nbewitched. Well, he would marry her.”\n“You shall tell me this part of the story another time,” I said; “but\nnow I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire.\nWas it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had any hand in\nit?”\n“You’ve hit it, ma’am: it’s quite certain that it was her, and nobody\nbut her, that set it going. She had a woman to take care of her called\nMrs. Poole—an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy, but for one\nfault—a fault common to a deal of them nurses and matrons—_she kept a\nprivate bottle of gin by her_, and now and then took a drop over-much.\nIt is excusable, for she had a hard life of it: but still it was\ndangerous; for when Mrs. Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water,\nthe mad lady, who was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of\nher pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the\nhouse, doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They say she\nhad nearly burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don’t know about\nthat. However, on this night, she set fire first to the hangings of the\nroom next her own, and then she got down to a lower storey, and made\nher way to the chamber that had been the governess’s—(she was like as\nif she knew somehow how matters had gone on, and had a spite at\nher)—and she kindled the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in\nit, fortunately. The governess had run away two months before; and for\nall Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the most precious thing\nhe had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew\nsavage—quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but\nhe got dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent\nMrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but\nhe did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and\nshe deserved it—she was a very good woman. Miss Adèle, a ward he had,\nwas put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and\nshut himself up like a hermit at the Hall.”\n“What! did he not leave England?”\n“Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones of\nthe house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the\ngrounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses—which it is my\nopinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he\nwas before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma’am.\nHe was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and\nhe was not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will of his\nown, if ever man had. I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my part,\nI have often wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she\ncame to Thornfield Hall.”\n“Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?”\n“Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning\nabove and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them\ndown himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And\nthen they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was\nstanding, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till\nthey could hear her a mile off: I saw her and heard her with my own\neyes. She was a big woman, and had long black hair: we could see it\nstreaming against the flames as she stood. I witnessed, and several\nmore witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend through the sky-light on to the\nroof; we heard him call ‘Bertha!’ We saw him approach her; and then,\nma’am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay\nsmashed on the pavement.”\nThe next minute she lay smashed on the pavement\n“Dead?”\n“Dead! Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were\nscattered.”\n“Good God!”\n“You may well say so, ma’am: it was frightful!”\nHe shuddered.\n“And afterwards?” I urged.\n“Well, ma’am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there are\nonly some bits of walls standing now.”\n“Were any other lives lost?”\n“No—perhaps it would have been better if there had.”\n“What do you mean?”\n“Poor Mr. Edward!” he ejaculated, “I little thought ever to have seen\nit! Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his first\nmarriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had one\nliving: but I pity him, for my part.”\n“You said he was alive?” I exclaimed.\n“Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead.”\n“Why? How?” My blood was again running cold. “Where is he?” I demanded.\n“Is he in England?”\n“Ay—ay—he’s in England; he can’t get out of England, I fancy—he’s a\nfixture now.”\nWhat agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it.\n“He is stone-blind,” he said at last. “Yes, he is stone-blind, is Mr.\nEdward.”\nI had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength to\nask what had caused this calamity.\n“It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a\nway, ma’am: he wouldn’t leave the house till every one else was out\nbefore him. As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs.\nRochester had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great\ncrash—all fell. He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but sadly\nhurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly; but one\neye was knocked out, and one hand so crushed that Mr. Carter, the\nsurgeon, had to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed: he lost\nthe sight of that also. He is now helpless, indeed—blind and a\ncripple.”\n“Where is he? Where does he now live?”\n“At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off:\nquite a desolate spot.”\n“Who is with him?”\n“Old John and his wife: he would have none else. He is quite broken\ndown, they say.”\n“Have you any sort of conveyance?”\n“We have a chaise, ma’am, a very handsome chaise.”\n“Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me to\nFerndean before dark this day, I’ll pay both you and him twice the hire\nyou usually demand.”\n', 'The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity,\nmoderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood.\nI had heard of it before. Mr. Rochester often spoke of it, and\nsometimes went there. His father had purchased the estate for the sake\nof the game covers. He would have let the house, but could find no\ntenant, in consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious site.\nFerndean then remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the exception\nof some two or three rooms fitted up for the accommodation of the\nsquire when he went there in the season to shoot.\nTo this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the\ncharacteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating\nrain. The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the chaise\nand driver with the double remuneration I had promised. Even when\nwithin a very short distance of the manor-house, you could see nothing\nof it, so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about it.\nIron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, and\npassing through them, I found myself at once in the twilight of\nclose-ranked trees. There was a grass-grown track descending the forest\naisle between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches. I\nfollowed it, expecting soon to reach the dwelling; but it stretched on\nand on, it wound far and farther: no sign of habitation or grounds was\nvisible.\nI thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way. The darkness\nof natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me. I looked round\nin search of another road. There was none: all was interwoven stem,\ncolumnar trunk, dense summer foliage—no opening anywhere.\nI proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little;\npresently I beheld a railing, then the house—scarce, by this dim light,\ndistinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying\nwalls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a\nspace of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a\nsemicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad\ngravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of\nthe forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front; the\nwindows were latticed and narrow: the front door was narrow too, one\nstep led up to it. The whole looked, as the host of the Rochester Arms\nhad said, “quite a desolate spot.” It was as still as a church on a\nweek-day: the pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound\naudible in its vicinage.\n“Can there be life here?” I asked.\nYes, life of some kind there was; for I heard a movement—that narrow\nfront-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue from the\ngrange.\nIt opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the\nstep; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel\nwhether it rained. Dusk as it was, I had recognised him—it was my\nmaster, Edward Fairfax Rochester, and no other.\nI stayed my step, almost my breath, and stood to watch him—to examine\nhim, myself unseen, and alas! to him invisible. It was a sudden\nmeeting, and one in which rapture was kept well in check by pain. I had\nno difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation, my step from\nhasty advance.\nHis form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever: his port\nwas still erect, his hair was still raven black; nor were his features\naltered or sunk: not in one year’s space, by any sorrow, could his\nathletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted. But in his\ncountenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding—that\nreminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous\nto approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes\ncruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson.\nAnd, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity?—if you\ndo, you little know me. A soft hope blent with my sorrow that soon I\nshould dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips so\nsternly sealed beneath it: but not yet. I would not accost him yet.\nHe descended the one step, and advanced slowly and gropingly towards\nthe grass-plat. Where was his daring stride now? Then he paused, as if\nhe knew not which way to turn. He lifted his hand and opened his\neyelids; gazed blank, and with a straining effort, on the sky, and\ntoward the amphitheatre of trees: one saw that all to him was void\ndarkness. He stretched his right hand (the left arm, the mutilated one,\nhe kept hidden in his bosom); he seemed to wish by touch to gain an\nidea of what lay around him: he met but vacancy still; for the trees\nwere some yards off where he stood. He relinquished the endeavour,\nfolded his arms, and stood quiet and mute in the rain, now falling fast\non his uncovered head. At this moment John approached him from some\nquarter.\n“Will you take my arm, sir?” he said; “there is a heavy shower coming\non: had you not better go in?”\n“Let me alone,” was the answer.\nJohn withdrew without having observed me. Mr. Rochester now tried to\nwalk about: vainly,—all was too uncertain. He groped his way back to\nthe house, and, re-entering it, closed the door.\nI now drew near and knocked: John’s wife opened for me. “Mary,” I said,\n“how are you?”\nShe started as if she had seen a ghost: I calmed her. To her hurried\n“Is it really you, miss, come at this late hour to this lonely place?”\nI answered by taking her hand; and then I followed her into the\nkitchen, where John now sat by a good fire. I explained to them, in few\nwords, that I had heard all which had happened since I left Thornfield,\nand that I was come to see Mr. Rochester. I asked John to go down to\nthe turn-pike-house, where I had dismissed the chaise, and bring my\ntrunk, which I had left there: and then, while I removed my bonnet and\nshawl, I questioned Mary as to whether I could be accommodated at the\nManor House for the night; and finding that arrangements to that\neffect, though difficult, would not be impossible, I informed her I\nshould stay. Just at this moment the parlour-bell rang.\n“When you go in,” said I, “tell your master that a person wishes to\nspeak to him, but do not give my name.”\n“I don’t think he will see you,” she answered; “he refuses everybody.”\nWhen she returned, I inquired what he had said.\n“You are to send in your name and your business,” she replied. She then\nproceeded to fill a glass with water, and place it on a tray, together\nwith candles.\n“Is that what he rang for?” I asked.\n“Yes: he always has candles brought in at dark, though he is blind.”\n“Give the tray to me; I will carry it in.”\nI took it from her hand: she pointed me out the parlour door. The tray\nshook as I held it; the water spilt from the glass; my heart struck my\nribs loud and fast. Mary opened the door for me, and shut it behind me.\nThis parlour looked gloomy: a neglected handful of fire burnt low in\nthe grate; and, leaning over it, with his head supported against the\nhigh, old-fashioned mantelpiece, appeared the blind tenant of the room.\nHis old dog, Pilot, lay on one side, removed out of the way, and coiled\nup as if afraid of being inadvertently trodden upon. Pilot pricked up\nhis ears when I came in: then he jumped up with a yelp and a whine, and\nbounded towards me: he almost knocked the tray from my hands. I set it\non the table; then patted him, and said softly, “Lie down!” Mr.\nRochester turned mechanically to _see_ what the commotion was: but as\nhe _saw_ nothing, he returned and sighed.\n“Give me the water, Mary,” he said.\nI approached him with the now only half-filled glass; Pilot followed\nme, still excited.\n“What is the matter?” he inquired.\n“Down, Pilot!” I again said. He checked the water on its way to his\nlips, and seemed to listen: he drank, and put the glass down. “This is\nyou, Mary, is it not?”\n“Mary is in the kitchen,” I answered.\nHe put out his hand with a quick gesture, but not seeing where I stood,\nhe did not touch me. “Who is this? Who is this?” he demanded, trying,\nas it seemed, to _see_ with those sightless eyes—unavailing and\ndistressing attempt! “Answer me—speak again!” he ordered, imperiously\nand aloud.\n“Will you have a little more water, sir? I spilt half of what was in\nthe glass,” I said.\n“_Who_ is it? _What_ is it? Who speaks?”\n“Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this\nevening,” I answered.\n“Great God!—what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has\nseized me?”\n“No delusion—no madness: your mind, sir, is too strong for delusion,\nyour health too sound for frenzy.”\n“And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I _cannot_ see, but\nI must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst. Whatever—whoever\nyou are—be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!”\nHe groped; I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine.\n“Her very fingers!” he cried; “her small, slight fingers! If so there\nmust be more of her.”\nThe muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my\nshoulder—neck—waist—I was entwined and gathered to him.\n“Is it Jane? _What_ is it? This is her shape—this is her size—”\n“And this her voice,” I added. “She is all here: her heart, too. God\nbless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again.”\n“Jane Eyre!—Jane Eyre,” was all he said.\n“My dear master,” I answered, “I am Jane Eyre: I have found you out—I\nam come back to you.”\n“In truth?—in the flesh? My living Jane?”\n“You touch me, sir,—you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a\ncorpse, nor vacant like air, am I?”\n“My living darling! These are certainly her limbs, and these her\nfeatures; but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery. It is a dream;\nsuch dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to\nmy heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus—and felt that she loved\nme, and trusted that she would not leave me.”\n“Which I never will, sir, from this day.”\n“Never will, says the vision? But I always woke and found it an empty\nmockery; and I was desolate and abandoned—my life dark, lonely,\nhopeless—my soul athirst and forbidden to drink—my heart famished and\nnever to be fed. Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will\nfly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before\nyou go—embrace me, Jane.”\n“There, sir—and there!”’\nI pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes—I swept\nhis hair from his brow, and kissed that too. He suddenly seemed to\narouse himself: the conviction of the reality of all this seized him.\n“It is you—is it, Jane? You are come back to me then?”\n“I am.”\n“And you do not lie dead in some ditch under some stream? And you are\nnot a pining outcast amongst strangers?”\n“No, sir! I am an independent woman now.”\n“Independent! What do you mean, Jane?”\n“My uncle in Madeira is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds.”\n“Ah! this is practical—this is real!” he cried: “I should never dream\nthat. Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, so animating and\npiquant, as well as soft: it cheers my withered heart; it puts life\ninto it.—What, Janet! Are you an independent woman? A rich woman?”\n“Quite rich, sir. If you won’t let me live with you, I can build a\nhouse of my own close up to your door, and you may come and sit in my\nparlour when you want company of an evening.”\n“But as you are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who will\nlook after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a blind\nlameter like me?”\n“I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own\nmistress.”\n“And you will stay with me?”\n“Certainly—unless you object. I will be your neighbour, your nurse,\nyour housekeeper. I find you lonely: I will be your companion—to read\nto you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes\nand hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy, my dear master; you\nshall not be left desolate, so long as I live.”\nHe replied not: he seemed serious—abstracted; he sighed; he half-opened\nhis lips as if to speak: he closed them again. I felt a little\nembarrassed. Perhaps I had too rashly over-leaped conventionalities;\nand he, like St. John, saw impropriety in my inconsiderateness. I had\nindeed made my proposal from the idea that he wished and would ask me\nto be his wife: an expectation, not the less certain because\nunexpressed, had buoyed me up, that he would claim me at once as his\nown. But no hint to that effect escaping him and his countenance\nbecoming more overcast, I suddenly remembered that I might have been\nall wrong, and was perhaps playing the fool unwittingly; and I began\ngently to withdraw myself from his arms—but he eagerly snatched me\ncloser.\n“No—no—Jane; you must not go. No—I have touched you, heard you, felt\nthe comfort of your presence—the sweetness of your consolation: I\ncannot give up these joys. I have little left in myself—I must have\nyou. The world may laugh—may call me absurd, selfish—but it does not\nsignify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will\ntake deadly vengeance on its frame.”\n“Well, sir, I will stay with you: I have said so.”\n“Yes—but you understand one thing by staying with me; and I understand\nanother. You, perhaps, could make up your mind to be about my hand and\nchair—to wait on me as a kind little nurse (for you have an\naffectionate heart and a generous spirit, which prompt you to make\nsacrifices for those you pity), and that ought to suffice for me no\ndoubt. I suppose I should now entertain none but fatherly feelings for\nyou: do you think so? Come—tell me.”\n“I will think what you like, sir: I am content to be only your nurse,\nif you think it better.”\n“But you cannot always be my nurse, Janet: you are young—you must marry\none day.”\n“I don’t care about being married.”\n“You should care, Janet: if I were what I once was, I would try to make\nyou care—but—a sightless block!”\nHe relapsed again into gloom. I, on the contrary, became more cheerful,\nand took fresh courage: these last words gave me an insight as to where\nthe difficulty lay; and as it was no difficulty with me, I felt quite\nrelieved from my previous embarrassment. I resumed a livelier vein of\nconversation.\n“It is time some one undertook to rehumanise you,” said I, parting his\nthick and long uncut locks; “for I see you are being metamorphosed into\na lion, or something of that sort. You have a ‘faux air’ of\nNebuchadnezzar in the fields about you, that is certain: your hair\nreminds me of eagles’ feathers; whether your nails are grown like\nbirds’ claws or not, I have not yet noticed.”\n“On this arm, I have neither hand nor nails,” he said, drawing the\nmutilated limb from his breast, and showing it to me. “It is a mere\nstump—a ghastly sight! Don’t you think so, Jane?”\n“It is a pity to see it; and a pity to see your eyes—and the scar of\nfire on your forehead: and the worst of it is, one is in danger of\nloving you too well for all this; and making too much of you.”\n“I thought you would be revolted, Jane, when you saw my arm, and my\ncicatrised visage.”\n“Did you? Don’t tell me so—lest I should say something disparaging to\nyour judgment. Now, let me leave you an instant, to make a better fire,\nand have the hearth swept up. Can you tell when there is a good fire?”\n“Yes; with the right eye I see a glow—a ruddy haze.”\n“And you see the candles?”\n“Very dimly—each is a luminous cloud.”\n“Can you see me?”\n“No, my fairy: but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you.”\n“When do you take supper?”\n“I never take supper.”\n“But you shall have some to-night. I am hungry: so are you, I daresay,\nonly you forget.”\nSummoning Mary, I soon had the room in more cheerful order: I prepared\nhim, likewise, a comfortable repast. My spirits were excited, and with\npleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, and for a long time\nafter. There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and\nvivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I\nsuited him; all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him.\nDelightful consciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature:\nin his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine. Blind as he\nwas, smiles played over his face, joy dawned on his forehead: his\nlineaments softened and warmed.\nAfter supper, he began to ask me many questions, of where I had been,\nwhat I had been doing, how I had found him out; but I gave him only\nvery partial replies: it was too late to enter into particulars that\nnight. Besides, I wished to touch no deep-thrilling chord—to open no\nfresh well of emotion in his heart: my sole present aim was to cheer\nhim. Cheered, as I have said, he was: and yet but by fits. If a\nmoment’s silence broke the conversation, he would turn restless, touch\nme, then say, “Jane.”\n“You are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that?”\nYou are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that?\n“I conscientiously believe so, Mr. Rochester.”\n“Yet how, on this dark and doleful evening, could you so suddenly rise\non my lone hearth? I stretched my hand to take a glass of water from a\nhireling, and it was given me by you: I asked a question, expecting\nJohn’s wife to answer me, and your voice spoke at my ear.”\n“Because I had come in, in Mary’s stead, with the tray.”\n“And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you.\nWho can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for\nmonths past? Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in day;\nfeeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out, of hunger\nwhen I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at times, a\nvery delirium of desire to behold my Jane again. Yes: for her\nrestoration I longed, far more than for that of my lost sight. How can\nit be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart\nas suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more.”\nA commonplace, practical reply, out of the train of his own disturbed\nideas, was, I was sure, the best and most reassuring for him in this\nframe of mind. I passed my finger over his eyebrows, and remarked that\nthey were scorched, and that I would apply something which would make\nthem grow as broad and black as ever.\n“Where is the use of doing me good in any way, beneficent spirit, when,\nat some fatal moment, you will again desert me—passing like a shadow,\nwhither and how to me unknown, and for me remaining afterwards\nundiscoverable?”\n“Have you a pocket-comb about you, sir?”\n“What for, Jane?”\n“Just to comb out this shaggy black mane. I find you rather alarming,\nwhen I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a fairy, but I\nam sure, you are more like a brownie.”\n“Am I hideous, Jane?”\n“Very, sir: you always were, you know.”\n“Humph! The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you have\nsojourned.”\n“Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred times\nbetter people; possessed of ideas and views you never entertained in\nyour life: quite more refined and exalted.”\n“Who the deuce have you been with?”\n“If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of your\nhead; and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of my\nsubstantiality.”\n“Who have you been with, Jane?”\n“You shall not get it out of me to-night, sir; you must wait till\nto-morrow; to leave my tale half told, will, you know, be a sort of\nsecurity that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish it. By\nthe bye, I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass of\nwater then: I must bring an egg at the least, to say nothing of fried\nham.”\n“You mocking changeling—fairy-born and human-bred! You make me feel as\nI have not felt these twelve months. If Saul could have had you for his\nDavid, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the\nharp.”\n“There, sir, you are redd up and made decent. Now I’ll leave you: I\nhave been travelling these last three days, and I believe I am tired.\nGood night.”\n“Just one word, Jane: were there only ladies in the house where you\nhave been?”\nI laughed and made my escape, still laughing as I ran upstairs. “A good\nidea!” I thought with glee. “I see I have the means of fretting him out\nof his melancholy for some time to come.”\nVery early the next morning I heard him up and astir, wandering from\none room to another. As soon as Mary came down I heard the question:\n“Is Miss Eyre here?” Then: “Which room did you put her into? Was it\ndry? Is she up? Go and ask if she wants anything; and when she will\ncome down.”\nI came down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast.\nEntering the room very softly, I had a view of him before he discovered\nmy presence. It was mournful, indeed, to witness the subjugation of\nthat vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity. He sat in his\nchair—still, but not at rest: expectant evidently; the lines of now\nhabitual sadness marking his strong features. His countenance reminded\none of a lamp quenched, waiting to be re-lit—and alas! it was not\nhimself that could now kindle the lustre of animated expression: he was\ndependent on another for that office! I had meant to be gay and\ncareless, but the powerlessness of the strong man touched my heart to\nthe quick: still I accosted him with what vivacity I could.\n“It is a bright, sunny morning, sir,” I said. “The rain is over and\ngone, and there is a tender shining after it: you shall have a walk\nsoon.”\nI had wakened the glow: his features beamed.\n“Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone:\nnot vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over\nthe wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising\nsun had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane’s\ntongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the\nsunshine I can feel is in her presence.”\nThe water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just\nas if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a\nsparrow to become its purveyor. But I would not be lachrymose: I dashed\noff the salt drops, and busied myself with preparing breakfast.\nMost of the morning was spent in the open air. I led him out of the wet\nand wild wood into some cheerful fields: I described to him how\nbrilliantly green they were; how the flowers and hedges looked\nrefreshed; how sparklingly blue was the sky. I sought a seat for him in\na hidden and lovely spot, a dry stump of a tree; nor did I refuse to\nlet him, when seated, place me on his knee. Why should I, when both he\nand I were happier near than apart? Pilot lay beside us: all was quiet.\nHe broke out suddenly while clasping me in his arms—\n“Cruel, cruel deserter! Oh, Jane, what did I feel when I discovered you\nhad fled from Thornfield, and when I could nowhere find you; and, after\nexamining your apartment, ascertained that you had taken no money, nor\nanything which could serve as an equivalent! A pearl necklace I had\ngiven you lay untouched in its little casket; your trunks were left\ncorded and locked as they had been prepared for the bridal tour. What\ncould my darling do, I asked, left destitute and penniless? And what\ndid she do? Let me hear now.”\nThus urged, I began the narrative of my experience for the last year. I\nsoftened considerably what related to the three days of wandering and\nstarvation, because to have told him all would have been to inflict\nunnecessary pain: the little I did say lacerated his faithful heart\ndeeper than I wished.\nI should not have left him thus, he said, without any means of making\nmy way: I should have told him my intention. I should have confided in\nhim: he would never have forced me to be his mistress. Violent as he\nhad seemed in his despair, he, in truth, loved me far too well and too\ntenderly to constitute himself my tyrant: he would have given me half\nhis fortune, without demanding so much as a kiss in return, rather than\nI should have flung myself friendless on the wide world. I had endured,\nhe was certain, more than I had confessed to him.\n“Well, whatever my sufferings had been, they were very short,” I\nanswered: and then I proceeded to tell him how I had been received at\nMoor House; how I had obtained the office of schoolmistress, &c. The\naccession of fortune, the discovery of my relations, followed in due\norder. Of course, St. John Rivers’ name came in frequently in the\nprogress of my tale. When I had done, that name was immediately taken\nup.\n“This St. John, then, is your cousin?”\n“Yes.”\n“You have spoken of him often: do you like him?”\n“He was a very good man, sir; I could not help liking him.”\n“A good man. Does that mean a respectable well-conducted man of fifty?\nOr what does it mean?”\n“St John was only twenty-nine, sir.”\n“‘_Jeune encore_,’ as the French say. Is he a person of low stature,\nphlegmatic, and plain? A person whose goodness consists rather in his\nguiltlessness of vice, than in his prowess in virtue.”\n“He is untiringly active. Great and exalted deeds are what he lives to\nperform.”\n“But his brain? That is probably rather soft? He means well: but you\nshrug your shoulders to hear him talk?”\n“He talks little, sir: what he does say is ever to the point. His brain\nis first-rate, I should think not impressible, but vigorous.”\n“Is he an able man, then?”\n“Truly able.”\n“A thoroughly educated man?”\n“St. John is an accomplished and profound scholar.”\n“His manners, I think, you said are not to your taste?—priggish and\nparsonic?”\n“I never mentioned his manners; but, unless I had a very bad taste,\nthey must suit it; they are polished, calm, and gentlemanlike.”\n“His appearance,—I forget what description you gave of his\nappearance;—a sort of raw curate, half strangled with his white\nneckcloth, and stilted up on his thick-soled high-lows, eh?”\n“St. John dresses well. He is a handsome man: tall, fair, with blue\neyes, and a Grecian profile.”\n(Aside.) “Damn him!”—(To me.) “Did you like him, Jane?”\n“Yes, Mr. Rochester, I liked him: but you asked me that before.”\nI perceived, of course, the drift of my interlocutor. Jealousy had got\nhold of him: she stung him; but the sting was salutary: it gave him\nrespite from the gnawing fang of melancholy. I would not, therefore,\nimmediately charm the snake.\n“Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee, Miss Eyre?”\nwas the next somewhat unexpected observation.\n“Why not, Mr. Rochester?”\n“The picture you have just drawn is suggestive of a rather too\noverwhelming contrast. Your words have delineated very prettily a\ngraceful Apollo: he is present to your imagination,—tall, fair,\nblue-eyed, and with a Grecian profile. Your eyes dwell on a Vulcan,—a\nreal blacksmith, brown, broad-shouldered: and blind and lame into the\nbargain.”\n“I never thought of it, before; but you certainly are rather like\nVulcan, sir.”\n“Well, you can leave me, ma’am: but before you go” (and he retained me\nby a firmer grasp than ever), “you will be pleased just to answer me a\nquestion or two.” He paused.\n“What questions, Mr. Rochester?”\nThen followed this cross-examination.\n“St. John made you schoolmistress of Morton before he knew you were his\ncousin?”\n“Yes.”\n“You would often see him? He would visit the school sometimes?”\n“Daily.”\n“He would approve of your plans, Jane? I know they would be clever, for\nyou are a talented creature!”\n“He approved of them—yes.”\n“He would discover many things in you he could not have expected to\nfind? Some of your accomplishments are not ordinary.”\n“I don’t know about that.”\n“You had a little cottage near the school, you say: did he ever come\nthere to see you?”\n“Now and then.”\n“Of an evening?”\n“Once or twice.”\nA pause.\n“How long did you reside with him and his sisters after the cousinship\nwas discovered?”\n“Five months.”\n“Did Rivers spend much time with the ladies of his family?”\n“Yes; the back parlour was both his study and ours: he sat near the\nwindow, and we by the table.”\n“Did he study much?”\n“A good deal.”\n“What?”\n“Hindostanee.”\n“And what did you do meantime?”\n“I learnt German, at first.”\n“Did he teach you?”\n“He did not understand German.”\n“Did he teach you nothing?”\n“A little Hindostanee.”\n“Rivers taught you Hindostanee?”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“And his sisters also?”\n“No.”\n“Only you?”\n“Only me.”\n“Did you ask to learn?”\n“No.”\n“He wished to teach you?”\n“Yes.”\nA second pause.\n“Why did he wish it? Of what use could Hindostanee be to you?”\n“He intended me to go with him to India.”\n“Ah! here I reach the root of the matter. He wanted you to marry him?”\n“He asked me to marry him.”\n“That is a fiction—an impudent invention to vex me.”\n“I beg your pardon, it is the literal truth: he asked me more than\nonce, and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could be.”\n“Miss Eyre, I repeat it, you can leave me. How often am I to say the\nsame thing? Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee, when I\nhave given you notice to quit?”\n“Because I am comfortable there.”\n“No, Jane, you are not comfortable there, because your heart is not\nwith me: it is with this cousin—this St. John. Oh, till this moment, I\nthought my little Jane was all mine! I had a belief she loved me even\nwhen she left me: that was an atom of sweet in much bitter. Long as we\nhave been parted, hot tears as I have wept over our separation, I never\nthought that while I was mourning her, she was loving another! But it\nis useless grieving. Jane, leave me: go and marry Rivers.”\n“Shake me off, then, sir,—push me away, for I’ll not leave you of my\nown accord.”\n“Jane, I ever like your tone of voice: it still renews hope, it sounds\nso truthful. When I hear it, it carries me back a year. I forget that\nyou have formed a new tie. But I am not a fool—go—”\n“Where must I go, sir?”\n“Your own way—with the husband you have chosen.”\n“Who is that?”\n“You know—this St. John Rivers.”\n“He is not my husband, nor ever will be. He does not love me: I do not\nlove him. He loves (as he _can_ love, and that is not as you love) a\nbeautiful young lady called Rosamond. He wanted to marry me only\nbecause he thought I should make a suitable missionary’s wife, which\nshe would not have done. He is good and great, but severe; and, for me,\ncold as an iceberg. He is not like you, sir: I am not happy at his\nside, nor near him, nor with him. He has no indulgence for me—no\nfondness. He sees nothing attractive in me; not even youth—only a few\nuseful mental points.—Then I must leave you, sir, to go to him?”\nI shuddered involuntarily, and clung instinctively closer to my blind\nbut beloved master. He smiled.\n“What, Jane! Is this true? Is such really the state of matters between\nyou and Rivers?”\n“Absolutely, sir! Oh, you need not be jealous! I wanted to tease you a\nlittle to make you less sad: I thought anger would be better than\ngrief. But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much I\n_do_ love you, you would be proud and content. All my heart is yours,\nsir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to\nexile the rest of me from your presence for ever.”\nAgain, as he kissed me, painful thoughts darkened his aspect.\n“My seared vision! My crippled strength!” he murmured regretfully.\nI caressed, in order to soothe him. I knew of what he was thinking, and\nwanted to speak for him, but dared not. As he turned aside his face a\nminute, I saw a tear slide from under the sealed eyelid, and trickle\ndown the manly cheek. My heart swelled.\n“I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in\nThornfield orchard,” he remarked ere long. “And what right would that\nruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?”\n“You are no ruin, sir—no lightning-struck tree: you are green and\nvigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or\nnot, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they\ngrow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your\nstrength offers them so safe a prop.”\nAgain he smiled: I gave him comfort.\n“You speak of friends, Jane?” he asked.\n“Yes, of friends,” I answered rather hesitatingly: for I knew I meant\nmore than friends, but could not tell what other word to employ. He\nhelped me.\n“Ah! Jane. But I want a wife.”\n“Do you, sir?”\n“Yes: is it news to you?”\n“Of course: you said nothing about it before.”\n“Is it unwelcome news?”\n“That depends on circumstances, sir—on your choice.”\n“Which you shall make for me, Jane. I will abide by your decision.”\n“Choose then, sir—_her who loves you best_.”\n“I will at least choose—_her I love best_. Jane, will you marry me?”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“A crippled man, twenty years older than you, whom you will have to\nwait on?”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“Truly, Jane?”\n“Most truly, sir.”\n“Oh! my darling! God bless you and reward you!”\n“Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life—if ever I thought\na good thought—if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer—if ever\nI wished a righteous wish,—I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for\nme, to be as happy as I can be on earth.”\n“Because you delight in sacrifice.”\n“Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for\ncontent. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value—to press my\nlips to what I love—to repose on what I trust: is that to make a\nsacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice.”\n“And to bear with my infirmities, Jane: to overlook my deficiencies.”\n“Which are none, sir, to me. I love you better now, when I can really\nbe useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when\nyou disdained every part but that of the giver and protector.”\n“Hitherto I have hated to be helped—to be led: henceforth, I feel I\nshall hate it no more. I did not like to put my hand into a hireling’s,\nbut it is pleasant to feel it circled by Jane’s little fingers. I\npreferred utter loneliness to the constant attendance of servants; but\nJane’s soft ministry will be a perpetual joy. Jane suits me: do I suit\nher?”\n“To the finest fibre of my nature, sir.”\n“The case being so, we have nothing in the world to wait for: we must\nbe married instantly.”\nHe looked and spoke with eagerness: his old impetuosity was rising.\n“We must become one flesh without any delay, Jane: there is but the\nlicence to get—then we marry.”\n“Mr. Rochester, I have just discovered the sun is far declined from its\nmeridian, and Pilot is actually gone home to his dinner. Let me look at\nyour watch.”\n“Fasten it into your girdle, Janet, and keep it henceforward: I have no\nuse for it.”\n“It is nearly four o’clock in the afternoon, sir. Don’t you feel\nhungry?”\n“The third day from this must be our wedding-day, Jane. Never mind fine\nclothes and jewels, now: all that is not worth a fillip.”\n“The sun has dried up all the rain-drops, sir. The breeze is still: it\nis quite hot.”\n“Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this moment\nfastened round my bronze scrag under my cravat? I have worn it since\nthe day I lost my only treasure, as a memento of her.”\n“We will go home through the wood: that will be the shadiest way.”\nHe pursued his own thoughts without heeding me.\n“Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells\nwith gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees\nnot as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far\nmore wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent\nflower—breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from\nme. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation:\ninstead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued\nits course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through\nthe valley of the shadow of death. _His_ chastisements are mighty; and\none smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my\nstrength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign\nguidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane—only—only of\nlate—I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began\nto experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my\nMaker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but\nvery sincere.\n“Some days since: nay, I can number them—four; it was last Monday\nnight, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced\nfrenzy—sorrow, sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I\ncould nowhere find you, you must be dead. Late that night—perhaps it\nmight be between eleven and twelve o’clock—ere I retired to my dreary\nrest, I supplicated God, that, if it seemed good to Him, I might soon\nbe taken from this life, and admitted to that world to come, where\nthere was still hope of rejoining Jane.\n“I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it\nsoothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and\nonly by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon. I longed\nfor thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I\nasked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long\nenough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss\nand peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged—that\nI could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my\nheart’s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words—‘Jane!\nJane! Jane!’”\n“Did you speak these words aloud?”\n“I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me\nmad: I pronounced them with such frantic energy.”\n“And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?”\n“Yes; but the time is of no consequence: what followed is the strange\npoint. You will think me superstitious,—some superstition I have in my\nblood, and always had: nevertheless, this is true—true at least it is\nthat I heard what I now relate.\n“As I exclaimed ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ a voice—I cannot tell whence the\nvoice came, but I know whose voice it was—replied, ‘I am coming: wait\nfor me;’ and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the\nwords—‘Where are you?’\n“I’ll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to\nmy mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express.\nFerndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls\ndull, and dies unreverberating. ‘Where are you?’ seemed spoken amongst\nmountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and\nfresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have\ndeemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In\nspirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in\nunconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to\ncomfort mine; for those were your accents—as certain as I live—they\nwere yours!”\nReader, it was on Monday night—near midnight—that I too had received\nthe mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to\nit. I listened to Mr. Rochester’s narrative, but made no disclosure in\nreturn. The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be\ncommunicated or discussed. If I told anything, my tale would be such as\nmust necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer:\nand that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not\nthe deeper shade of the supernatural. I kept these things then, and\npondered them in my heart.\n“You cannot now wonder,” continued my master, “that when you rose upon\nme so unexpectedly last night, I had difficulty in believing you any\nother than a mere voice and vision, something that would melt to\nsilence and annihilation, as the midnight whisper and mountain echo had\nmelted before. Now, I thank God! I know it to be otherwise. Yes, I\nthank God!”\nHe put me off his knee, rose, and reverently lifting his hat from his\nbrow, and bending his sightless eyes to the earth, he stood in mute\ndevotion. Only the last words of the worship were audible.\n“I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered\nmercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead\nhenceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto!”\nThen he stretched his hand out to be led. I took that dear hand, held\nit a moment to my lips, then let it pass round my shoulder: being so\nmuch lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop and guide. We\nentered the wood, and wended homeward.\n', 'Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and\nclerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went into\nthe kitchen of the manor-house, where Mary was cooking the dinner and\nJohn cleaning the knives, and I said—\n“Mary, I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning.” The\nhousekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic order\nof people, to whom one may at any time safely communicate a remarkable\npiece of news without incurring the danger of having one’s ears pierced\nby some shrill ejaculation, and subsequently stunned by a torrent of\nwordy wonderment. Mary did look up, and she did stare at me: the ladle\nwith which she was basting a pair of chickens roasting at the fire, did\nfor some three minutes hang suspended in air; and for the same space of\ntime John’s knives also had rest from the polishing process: but Mary,\nbending again over the roast, said only—\n“Have you, Miss? Well, for sure!”\nA short time after she pursued—“I seed you go out with the master, but\nI didn’t know you were gone to church to be wed;” and she basted away.\nJohn, when I turned to him, was grinning from ear to ear.\n“I telled Mary how it would be,” he said: “I knew what Mr. Edward”\n(John was an old servant, and had known his master when he was the\ncadet of the house, therefore, he often gave him his Christian name)—“I\nknew what Mr. Edward would do; and I was certain he would not wait long\nneither: and he’s done right, for aught I know. I wish you joy, Miss!”\nand he politely pulled his forelock.\n“Thank you, John. Mr. Rochester told me to give you and Mary this.” I\nput into his hand a five-pound note. Without waiting to hear more, I\nleft the kitchen. In passing the door of that sanctum some time after,\nI caught the words—\n“She’ll happen do better for him nor ony o’ t’ grand ladies.” And\nagain, “If she ben’t one o’ th’ handsomest, she’s noan faâl and varry\ngood-natured; and i’ his een she’s fair beautiful, onybody may see\nthat.”\nI wrote to Moor House and to Cambridge immediately, to say what I had\ndone: fully explaining also why I had thus acted. Diana and Mary\napproved the step unreservedly. Diana announced that she would just\ngive me time to get over the honeymoon, and then she would come and see\nme.\n“She had better not wait till then, Jane,” said Mr. Rochester, when I\nread her letter to him; “if she does, she will be too late, for our\nhoneymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your\ngrave or mine.”\nHow St. John received the news, I don’t know: he never answered the\nletter in which I communicated it: yet six months after he wrote to me,\nwithout, however, mentioning Mr. Rochester’s name or alluding to my\nmarriage. His letter was then calm, and, though very serious, kind. He\nhas maintained a regular, though not frequent, correspondence ever\nsince: he hopes I am happy, and trusts I am not of those who live\nwithout God in the world, and only mind earthly things.\nYou have not quite forgotten little Adèle, have you, reader? I had not;\nI soon asked and obtained leave of Mr. Rochester, to go and see her at\nthe school where he had placed her. Her frantic joy at beholding me\nagain moved me much. She looked pale and thin: she said she was not\nhappy. I found the rules of the establishment were too strict, its\ncourse of study too severe for a child of her age: I took her home with\nme. I meant to become her governess once more, but I soon found this\nimpracticable; my time and cares were now required by another—my\nhusband needed them all. So I sought out a school conducted on a more\nindulgent system, and near enough to permit of my visiting her often,\nand bringing her home sometimes. I took care she should never want for\nanything that could contribute to her comfort: she soon settled in her\nnew abode, became very happy there, and made fair progress in her\nstudies. As she grew up, a sound English education corrected in a great\nmeasure her French defects; and when she left school, I found in her a\npleasing and obliging companion: docile, good-tempered, and\nwell-principled. By her grateful attention to me and mine, she has long\nsince well repaid any little kindness I ever had it in my power to\noffer her.\nMy tale draws to its close: one word respecting my experience of\nmarried life, and one brief glance at the fortunes of those whose names\nhave most frequently recurred in this narrative, and I have done.\nI have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely\nfor and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely\nblest—blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s\nlife as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than\nI am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I\nknow no weariness of my Edward’s society: he knows none of mine, any\nmore than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our\nseparate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is\nfor us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We\ntalk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more\nanimated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him,\nall his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in\ncharacter—perfect concord is the result.\nMr. Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union; perhaps\nit was that circumstance that drew us so very near—that knit us so very\nclose: for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand.\nLiterally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of his eye. He saw\nnature—he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his\nbehalf, and of putting into words the effect of field, tree, town,\nriver, cloud, sunbeam—of the landscape before us; of the weather round\nus—and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp\non his eye. Never did I weary of reading to him; never did I weary of\nconducting him where he wished to go: of doing for him what he wished\nto be done. And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most\nexquisite, even though sad—because he claimed these services without\npainful shame or damping humiliation. He loved me so truly, that he\nknew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance: he felt I loved him\nso fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest\nwishes.\nOne morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a letter to\nhis dictation, he came and bent over me, and said—“Jane, have you a\nglittering ornament round your neck?”\nI had a gold watch-chain: I answered “Yes.”\n“And have you a pale blue dress on?”\nAnd have you a pale blue dress on?\nI had. He informed me then, that for some time he had fancied the\nobscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and that now he was\nsure of it.\nHe and I went up to London. He had the advice of an eminent oculist;\nand he eventually recovered the sight of that one eye. He cannot now\nsee very distinctly: he cannot read or write much; but he can find his\nway without being led by the hand: the sky is no longer a blank to\nhim—the earth no longer a void. When his first-born was put into his\narms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they\nonce were—large, brilliant, and black. On that occasion, he again, with\na full heart, acknowledged that God had tempered judgment with mercy.\nMy Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we\nmost love are happy likewise. Diana and Mary Rivers are both married:\nalternately, once every year, they come to see us, and we go to see\nthem. Diana’s husband is a captain in the navy, a gallant officer and a\ngood man. Mary’s is a clergyman, a college friend of her brother’s,\nand, from his attainments and principles, worthy of the connection.\nBoth Captain Fitzjames and Mr. Wharton love their wives, and are loved\nby them.\nAs to St. John Rivers, he left England: he went to India. He entered on\nthe path he had marked for himself; he pursues it still. A more\nresolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks and dangers.\nFirm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy, and zeal, and truth, he\nlabours for his race; he clears their painful way to improvement; he\nhews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber\nit. He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but\nhis is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim\nconvoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the\napostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says—“Whosoever will come\nafter me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.”\nHis is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a\nplace in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth—who\nstand without fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty\nvictories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful.\nSt. John is unmarried: he never will marry now. Himself has hitherto\nsufficed to the toil, and the toil draws near its close: his glorious\nsun hastens to its setting. The last letter I received from him drew\nfrom my eyes human tears, and yet filled my heart with divine joy: he\nanticipated his sure reward, his incorruptible crown. I know that a\nstranger’s hand will write to me next, to say that the good and\nfaithful servant has been called at length into the joy of his Lord.\nAnd why weep for this? No fear of death will darken St. John’s last\nhour: his mind will be unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope\nwill be sure, his faith steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this—\n“My Master,” he says, “has forewarned me. Daily He announces more\ndistinctly,—‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly\nrespond,—‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!’”\n*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANE EYRE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY ***\n    \nUpdated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will\nbe renamed.\nCreating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright\nlaw means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,\nso the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United\nStates without permission and without paying copyright\nroyalties. 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['There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question. I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed. The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner—something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were—she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.” “What does Bessie say I have done?” I asked. “Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.” A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement. Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. I returned to my book—Bewick’s History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of “the solitary rocks and promontories” by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape— “Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, Boils round the naked, melancholy isles Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.” Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with “the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space,—that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold.” Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children’s brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking. I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard, with its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the hour of eventide. The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine phantoms. The fiend pinning down the thief’s pack behind him, I passed over quickly: it was an object of terror. So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows. Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed’s lace frills, and crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland. With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way. I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon. The breakfast-room door opened. “Boh! Madam Mope!” cried the voice of John Reed; then he paused: he found the room apparently empty. “Where the dickens is she!” he continued. “Lizzy! Georgy! (calling to his sisters) Joan is not here: tell mama she is run out into the rain—bad animal!” “It is well I drew the curtain,” thought I; and I wished fervently he might not discover my hiding-place: nor would John Reed have found it out himself; he was not quick either of vision or conception; but Eliza just put her head in at the door, and said at once— “She is in the window-seat, to be sure, Jack.” And I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Jack. “What do you want?” I asked, with awkward diffidence. “Say, ‘What do you want, Master Reed?’” was the answer. “I want you to come here;” and seating himself in an arm-chair, he intimated by a gesture that I was to approach and stand before him. John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now to have been at school; but his mama had taken him home for a month or two, “on account of his delicate health.” Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home; but the mother’s heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that John’s sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining after home. John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an antipathy to me. He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like to offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject: she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though he did both now and then in her very presence, more frequently, however, behind her back. Habitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair: he spent some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without damaging the roots: I knew he would soon strike, and while dreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently deal it. I wonder if he read that notion in my face; for, all at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and strongly. I tottered, and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair. “That is for your impudence in answering mama awhile since,” said he, “and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for the look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!” Accustomed to John Reed’s abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it; my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult. “What were you doing behind the curtain?” he asked. “I was reading.” “Show the book.” I returned to the window and fetched it thence. “You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen’s children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama’s expense. Now, I’ll teach you to rummage my bookshelves: for they _are_ mine; all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go and stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows.” I did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp: my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded. “Wicked and cruel boy!” I said. “You are like a murderer—you are like a slave-driver—you are like the Roman emperors!” I had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula, &c. Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus to have declared aloud. “What! what!” he cried. “Did she say that to me? Did you hear her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won’t I tell mama? but first—” He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing. I really saw in him a tyrant, a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering: these sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic sort. I don’t very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me “Rat! Rat!” and bellowed out aloud. Aid was near him: Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who was gone upstairs: she now came upon the scene, followed by Bessie and her maid Abbot. We were parted: I heard the words— “Dear! dear! What a fury to fly at Master John!” “Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!” Then Mrs. Reed subjoined— “Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there.” Four hands were immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs. ', 'I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were disposed to entertain of me. The fact is, I was a trifle beside myself; or rather _out_ of myself, as the French would say: I was conscious that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths. “Hold her arms, Miss Abbot: she’s like a mad cat.” “For shame! for shame!” cried the lady’s-maid. “What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress’s son! Your young master.” “Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?” “No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep. There, sit down, and think over your wickedness.” They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed, and had thrust me upon a stool: my impulse was to rise from it like a spring; their two pair of hands arrested me instantly. “If you don’t sit still, you must be tied down,” said Bessie. “Miss Abbot, lend me your garters; she would break mine directly.” Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature. This preparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy it inferred, took a little of the excitement out of me. “Don’t take them off,” I cried; “I will not stir.” In guarantee whereof, I attached myself to my seat by my hands. “Mind you don’t,” said Bessie; and when she had ascertained that I was really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss Abbot stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as incredulous of my sanity. “She never did so before,” at last said Bessie, turning to the Abigail. “But it was always in her,” was the reply. “I’ve told Missis often my opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me. She’s an underhand little thing: I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover.” Bessie answered not; but ere long, addressing me, she said— “You ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Reed: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse.” I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. Miss Abbot joined in— “And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none: it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to them.” “What we tell you is for your good,” added Bessie, in no harsh voice, “you should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would have a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, Missis will send you away, I am sure.” “Besides,” said Miss Abbot, “God will punish her: He might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come, Bessie, we will leave her: I wouldn’t have her heart for anything. Say your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don’t repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away.” They went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them. The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne. This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because remote from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered. The house-maid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week’s quiet dust: and Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room—the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur. Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker’s men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion. My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted, was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the muffled windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room. I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door; and when I dared move, I got up and went to see. Alas! yes: no jail was ever more secure. Returning, I had to cross before the looking-glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie’s evening stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers. I returned to my stool. Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present. All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favour? Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged. Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted, much less punished; though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory: he called his mother “old girl,” too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still “her own darling.” I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfil every duty; and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to night. My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no one had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with general opprobrium. “Unjust!—unjust!” said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression—as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die. What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought! I could not answer the ceaseless inward question—_why_ I thus suffered; now, at the distance of—I will not say how many years, I see it clearly. I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen vassalage. If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them. They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their interest, or adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment. I know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child—though equally dependent and friendless—Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence more complacently; her children would have entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery. Daylight began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o’clock, and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heard the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire. All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so; what thought had I been but just conceiving of starving myself to death? That certainly was a crime: and was I fit to die? Or was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting bourne? In such vault I had been told did Mr. Reed lie buried; and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with gathering dread. I could not remember him; but I knew that he was my own uncle—my mother’s brother—that he had taken me when a parentless infant to his house; and that in his last moments he had required a promise of Mrs. Reed that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children. Mrs. Reed probably considered she had kept this promise; and so she had, I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her; but how could she really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with her, after her husband’s death, by any tie? It must have been most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group. A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not—never doubted—that if Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls—occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaming mirror—I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed’s spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister’s child, might quit its abode—whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed—and rise before me in this chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it—I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room; at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage; the key turned, Bessie and Abbot entered. “Miss Eyre, are you ill?” said Bessie. “What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me!” exclaimed Abbot. “Take me out! Let me go into the nursery!” was my cry. “What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?” again demanded Bessie. “Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come.” I had now got hold of Bessie’s hand, and she did not snatch it from me. “She has screamed out on purpose,” declared Abbot, in some disgust. “And what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have excused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know her naughty tricks.” “What is all this?” demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Reed came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling stormily. “Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre should be left in the red-room till I came to her myself.” “Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma’am,” pleaded Bessie. “Let her go,” was the only answer. “Loose Bessie’s hand, child: you cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I abhor artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that tricks will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer, and it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you then.” “O aunt! have pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it—let me be punished some other way! I shall be killed if—” “Silence! This violence is all most repulsive:” and so, no doubt, she felt it. I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked on me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity. Bessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Reed, impatient of my now frantic anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me in, without farther parley. I heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone, I suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed the scene. ', 'The next thing I remember is, waking up with a feeling as if I had had a frightful nightmare, and seeing before me a terrible red glare, crossed with thick black bars. I heard voices, too, speaking with a hollow sound, and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water: agitation, uncertainty, and an all-predominating sense of terror confused my faculties. Ere long, I became aware that some one was handling me; lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture, and that more tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before. I rested my head against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy. In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved: I knew quite well that I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery fire. It was night: a candle burnt on the table; Bessie stood at the bed-foot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my pillow, leaning over me. I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and security, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an individual not belonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Reed. Turning from Bessie (though her presence was far less obnoxious to me than that of Abbot, for instance, would have been), I scrutinised the face of the gentleman: I knew him; it was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing: for herself and the children she employed a physician. “Well, who am I?” he asked. I pronounced his name, offering him at the same time my hand: he took it, smiling and saying, “We shall do very well by-and-by.” Then he laid me down, and addressing Bessie, charged her to be very careful that I was not disturbed during the night. Having given some further directions, and intimated that he should call again the next day, he departed; to my grief: I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat in the chair near my pillow; and as he closed the door after him, all the room darkened and my heart again sank: inexpressible sadness weighed it down. “Do you feel as if you should sleep, Miss?” asked Bessie, rather softly. Scarcely dared I answer her; for I feared the next sentence might be rough. “I will try.” “Would you like to drink, or could you eat anything?” “No, thank you, Bessie.” “Then I think I shall go to bed, for it is past twelve o’clock; but you may call me if you want anything in the night.” Wonderful civility this! It emboldened me to ask a question. “Bessie, what is the matter with me? Am I ill?” “You fell sick, I suppose, in the red-room with crying; you’ll be better soon, no doubt.” Bessie went into the housemaid’s apartment, which was near. I heard her say— “Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery; I daren’t for my life be alone with that poor child to-night: she might die; it’s such a strange thing she should have that fit: I wonder if she saw anything. Missis was rather too hard.” Sarah came back with her; they both went to bed; they were whispering together for half-an-hour before they fell asleep. I caught scraps of their conversation, from which I was able only too distinctly to infer the main subject discussed. “Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished”—“A great black dog behind him”—“Three loud raps on the chamber door”—“A light in the churchyard just over his grave,” &c., &c. At last both slept: the fire and the candle went out. For me, the watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; ear, eye, and mind were alike strained by dread: such dread as children only can feel. No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room; it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the reverberation to this day. Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did: while rending my heart-strings, you thought you were only uprooting my bad propensities. Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by the nursery hearth. I felt physically weak and broken down: but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt drop from my cheek than another followed. Yet, I thought, I ought to have been happy, for none of the Reeds were there, they were all gone out in the carriage with their mama. Abbot, too, was sewing in another room, and Bessie, as she moved hither and thither, putting away toys and arranging drawers, addressed to me every now and then a word of unwonted kindness. This state of things should have been to me a paradise of peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging; but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that no calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably. Bessie had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart on a certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird of paradise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, had been wont to stir in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had often petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine it more closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a privilege. This precious vessel was now placed on my knee, and I was cordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate pastry upon it. Vain favour! coming, like most other favours long deferred and often wished for, too late! I could not eat the tart; and the plumage of the bird, the tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded: I put both plate and tart away. Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word _book_ acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels from the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight. I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth’s surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other. Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find—all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed the book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table, beside the untasted tart. Bessie had now finished dusting and tidying the room, and having washed her hands, she opened a certain little drawer, full of splendid shreds of silk and satin, and began making a new bonnet for Georgiana’s doll. Meantime she sang: her song was— “In the days when we went gipsying,     A long time ago.” I had often heard the song before, and always with lively delight; for Bessie had a sweet voice,—at least, I thought so. But now, though her voice was still sweet, I found in its melody an indescribable sadness. Sometimes, preoccupied with her work, she sang the refrain very low, very lingeringly; “A long time ago” came out like the saddest cadence of a funeral hymn. She passed into another ballad, this time a really doleful one. “My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary;     Long is the way, and the mountains are wild; Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary     Over the path of the poor orphan child. Why did they send me so far and so lonely,     Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled? Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only     Watch o’er the steps of a poor orphan child. Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing,     Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild, God, in His mercy, protection is showing,     Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child. Ev’n should I fall o’er the broken bridge passing,     Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled, Still will my Father, with promise and blessing,     Take to His bosom the poor orphan child. There is a thought that for strength should avail me,     Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled; Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me;     God is a friend to the poor orphan child.” “Come, Miss Jane, don’t cry,” said Bessie as she finished. She might as well have said to the fire, “don’t burn!” but how could she divine the morbid suffering to which I was a prey? In the course of the morning Mr. Lloyd came again. “What, already up!” said he, as he entered the nursery. “Well, nurse, how is she?” Bessie answered that I was doing very well. “Then she ought to look more cheerful. Come here, Miss Jane: your name is Jane, is it not?” “Yes, sir, Jane Eyre.” “Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane Eyre; can you tell me what about? Have you any pain?” “No, sir.” “Oh! I daresay she is crying because she could not go out with Missis in the carriage,” interposed Bessie. “Surely not! why, she is too old for such pettishness.” I thought so too; and my self-esteem being wounded by the false charge, I answered promptly, “I never cried for such a thing in my life: I hate going out in the carriage. I cry because I am miserable.” “Oh fie, Miss!” said Bessie. The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled. I was standing before him; he fixed his eyes on me very steadily: his eyes were small and grey; not very bright, but I dare say I should think them shrewd now: he had a hard-featured yet good-natured looking face. Having considered me at leisure, he said— “What made you ill yesterday?” “She had a fall,” said Bessie, again putting in her word. “Fall! why, that is like a baby again! Can’t she manage to walk at her age? She must be eight or nine years old.” “I was knocked down,” was the blunt explanation, jerked out of me by another pang of mortified pride; “but that did not make me ill,” I added; while Mr. Lloyd helped himself to a pinch of snuff. As he was returning the box to his waistcoat pocket, a loud bell rang for the servants’ dinner; he knew what it was. “That’s for you, nurse,” said he; “you can go down; I’ll give Miss Jane a lecture till you come back.” Bessie would rather have stayed, but she was obliged to go, because punctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall. “The fall did not make you ill; what did, then?” pursued Mr. Lloyd when Bessie was gone. “I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark.” I saw Mr. Lloyd smile and frown at the same time. “Ghost! What, you are a baby after all! You are afraid of ghosts?” “Of Mr. Reed’s ghost I am: he died in that room, and was laid out there. Neither Bessie nor any one else will go into it at night, if they can help it; and it was cruel to shut me up alone without a candle,—so cruel that I think I shall never forget it.” “Nonsense! And is it that makes you so miserable? Are you afraid now in daylight?” “No: but night will come again before long: and besides,—I am unhappy,—very unhappy, for other things.” “What other things? Can you tell me some of them?” How much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult it was to frame any answer! Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words. Fearful, however, of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving my grief by imparting it, I, after a disturbed pause, contrived to frame a meagre, though, as far as it went, true response. “For one thing, I have no father or mother, brothers or sisters.” “You have a kind aunt and cousins.” Again I paused; then bunglingly enounced— “But John Reed knocked me down, and my aunt shut me up in the red-room.” Mr. Lloyd a second time produced his snuff-box. “Don’t you think Gateshead Hall a very beautiful house?” asked he. “Are you not very thankful to have such a fine place to live at?” “It is not my house, sir; and Abbot says I have less right to be here than a servant.” “Pooh! you can’t be silly enough to wish to leave such a splendid place?” “If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it; but I can never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman.” “Perhaps you may—who knows? Have you any relations besides Mrs. Reed?” “I think not, sir.” “None belonging to your father?” “I don’t know: I asked Aunt Reed once, and she said possibly I might have some poor, low relations called Eyre, but she knew nothing about them.” “If you had such, would you like to go to them?” I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable poverty; they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty for me was synonymous with degradation. “No; I should not like to belong to poor people,” was my reply. “Not even if they were kind to you?” I shook my head: I could not see how poor people had the means of being kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to be uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste. “But are your relatives so very poor? Are they working people?” “I cannot tell; Aunt Reed says if I have any, they must be a beggarly set: I should not like to go a begging.” “Would you like to go to school?” Again I reflected: I scarcely knew what school was: Bessie sometimes spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks, wore backboards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and precise: John Reed hated his school, and abused his master; but John Reed’s tastes were no rule for mine, and if Bessie’s accounts of school-discipline (gathered from the young ladies of a family where she had lived before coming to Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, her details of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies were, I thought, equally attractive. She boasted of beautiful paintings of landscapes and flowers by them executed; of songs they could sing and pieces they could play, of purses they could net, of French books they could translate; till my spirit was moved to emulation as I listened. Besides, school would be a complete change: it implied a long journey, an entire separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life. “I should indeed like to go to school,” was the audible conclusion of my musings. “Well, well! who knows what may happen?” said Mr. Lloyd, as he got up. “The child ought to have change of air and scene,” he added, speaking to himself; “nerves not in a good state.” Bessie now returned; at the same moment the carriage was heard rolling up the gravel-walk. “Is that your mistress, nurse?” asked Mr. Lloyd. “I should like to speak to her before I go.” Bessie invited him to walk into the breakfast-room, and led the way out. In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Reed, I presume, from after-occurrences, that the apothecary ventured to recommend my being sent to school; and the recommendation was no doubt readily enough adopted; for as Abbot said, in discussing the subject with Bessie when both sat sewing in the nursery one night, after I was in bed, and, as they thought, asleep, “Missis was, she dared say, glad enough to get rid of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child, who always looked as if she were watching everybody, and scheming plots underhand.” Abbot, I think, gave me credit for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes. On that same occasion I learned, for the first time, from Miss Abbot’s communications to Bessie, that my father had been a poor clergyman; that my mother had married him against the wishes of her friends, who considered the match beneath her; that my grandfather Reed was so irritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without a shilling; that after my mother and father had been married a year, the latter caught the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing town where his curacy was situated, and where that disease was then prevalent: that my mother took the infection from him, and both died within a month of each other. Bessie, when she heard this narrative, sighed and said, “Poor Miss Jane is to be pitied, too, Abbot.” “Yes,” responded Abbot; “if she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that.” “Not a great deal, to be sure,” agreed Bessie: “at any rate, a beauty like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition.” “Yes, I doat on Miss Georgiana!” cried the fervent Abbot. “Little darling!—with her long curls and her blue eyes, and such a sweet colour as she has; just as if she were painted!—Bessie, I could fancy a Welsh rabbit for supper.” “So could I—with a roast onion. Come, we’ll go down.” They went. ', 'From my discourse with Mr. Lloyd, and from the above reported conference between Bessie and Abbot, I gathered enough of hope to suffice as a motive for wishing to get well: a change seemed near,—I desired and waited it in silence. It tarried, however: days and weeks passed: I had regained my normal state of health, but no new allusion was made to the subject over which I brooded. Mrs. Reed surveyed me at times with a severe eye, but seldom addressed me: since my illness, she had drawn a more marked line of separation than ever between me and her own children; appointing me a small closet to sleep in by myself, condemning me to take my meals alone, and pass all my time in the nursery, while my cousins were constantly in the drawing-room. Not a hint, however, did she drop about sending me to school: still I felt an instinctive certainty that she would not long endure me under the same roof with her; for her glance, now more than ever, when turned on me, expressed an insuperable and rooted aversion. Eliza and Georgiana, evidently acting according to orders, spoke to me as little as possible: John thrust his tongue in his cheek whenever he saw me, and once attempted chastisement; but as I instantly turned against him, roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt which had stirred my corruption before, he thought it better to desist, and ran from me uttering execrations, and vowing I had burst his nose. I had indeed levelled at that prominent feature as hard a blow as my knuckles could inflict; and when I saw that either that or my look daunted him, I had the greatest inclination to follow up my advantage to purpose; but he was already with his mama. I heard him in a blubbering tone commence the tale of how “that nasty Jane Eyre” had flown at him like a mad cat: he was stopped rather harshly— “Don’t talk to me about her, John: I told you not to go near her; she is not worthy of notice; I do not choose that either you or your sisters should associate with her.” Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, and without at all deliberating on my words— “They are not fit to associate with me.” Mrs. Reed was rather a stout woman; but, on hearing this strange and audacious declaration, she ran nimbly up the stair, swept me like a whirlwind into the nursery, and crushing me down on the edge of my crib, dared me in an emphatic voice to rise from that place, or utter one syllable during the remainder of the day. “What would Uncle Reed say to you, if he were alive?” was my scarcely voluntary demand. I say scarcely voluntary, for it seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance: something spoke out of me over which I had no control. “What?” said Mrs. Reed under her breath: her usually cold composed grey eye became troubled with a look like fear; she took her hand from my arm, and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether I were child or fiend. I was now in for it. “My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so can papa and mama: they know how you shut me up all day long, and how you wish me dead.” Mrs. Reed soon rallied her spirits: she shook me most soundly, she boxed both my ears, and then left me without a word. Bessie supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour’s length, in which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof. I half believed her; for I felt indeed only bad feelings surging in my breast. November, December, and half of January passed away. Christmas and the New Year had been celebrated at Gateshead with the usual festive cheer; presents had been interchanged, dinners and evening parties given. From every enjoyment I was, of course, excluded: my share of the gaiety consisted in witnessing the daily apparelling of Eliza and Georgiana, and seeing them descend to the drawing-room, dressed out in thin muslin frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair elaborately ringletted; and afterwards, in listening to the sound of the piano or the harp played below, to the passing to and fro of the butler and footman, to the jingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed, to the broken hum of conversation as the drawing-room door opened and closed. When tired of this occupation, I would retire from the stairhead to the solitary and silent nursery: there, though somewhat sad, I was not miserable. To speak truth, I had not the least wish to go into company, for in company I was very rarely noticed; and if Bessie had but been kind and companionable, I should have deemed it a treat to spend the evenings quietly with her, instead of passing them under the formidable eye of Mrs. Reed, in a room full of ladies and gentlemen. But Bessie, as soon as she had dressed her young ladies, used to take herself off to the lively regions of the kitchen and housekeeper’s room, generally bearing the candle along with her. I then sat with my doll on my knee till the fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make sure that nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room; and when the embers sank to a dull red, I undressed hastily, tugging at knots and strings as I best might, and sought shelter from cold and darkness in my crib. To this crib I always took my doll; human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be happy likewise. Long did the hours seem while I waited the departure of the company, and listened for the sound of Bessie’s step on the stairs: sometimes she would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or her scissors, or perhaps to bring me something by way of supper—a bun or a cheese-cake—then she would sit on the bed while I ate it, and when I had finished, she would tuck the clothes round me, and twice she kissed me, and said, “Good night, Miss Jane.” When thus gentle, Bessie seemed to me the best, prettiest, kindest being in the world; and I wished most intensely that she would always be so pleasant and amiable, and never push me about, or scold, or task me unreasonably, as she was too often wont to do. Bessie Lee must, I think, have been a girl of good natural capacity, for she was smart in all she did, and had a remarkable knack of narrative; so, at least, I judge from the impression made on me by her nursery tales. She was pretty too, if my recollections of her face and person are correct. I remember her as a slim young woman, with black hair, dark eyes, very nice features, and good, clear complexion; but she had a capricious and hasty temper, and indifferent ideas of principle or justice: still, such as she was, I preferred her to any one else at Gateshead Hall. It was the fifteenth of January, about nine o’clock in the morning: Bessie was gone down to breakfast; my cousins had not yet been summoned to their mama; Eliza was putting on her bonnet and warm garden-coat to go and feed her poultry, an occupation of which she was fond: and not less so of selling the eggs to the housekeeper and hoarding up the money she thus obtained. She had a turn for traffic, and a marked propensity for saving; shown not only in the vending of eggs and chickens, but also in driving hard bargains with the gardener about flower-roots, seeds, and slips of plants; that functionary having orders from Mrs. Reed to buy of his young lady all the products of her parterre she wished to sell: and Eliza would have sold the hair off her head if she could have made a handsome profit thereby. As to her money, she first secreted it in odd corners, wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper; but some of these hoards having been discovered by the housemaid, Eliza, fearful of one day losing her valued treasure, consented to intrust it to her mother, at a usurious rate of interest—fifty or sixty per cent.; which interest she exacted every quarter, keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy. Georgiana sat on a high stool, dressing her hair at the glass, and interweaving her curls with artificial flowers and faded feathers, of which she had found a store in a drawer in the attic. I was making my bed, having received strict orders from Bessie to get it arranged before she returned (for Bessie now frequently employed me as a sort of under-nurserymaid, to tidy the room, dust the chairs, &c.). Having spread the quilt and folded my night-dress, I went to the window-seat to put in order some picture-books and doll’s house furniture scattered there; an abrupt command from Georgiana to let her playthings alone (for the tiny chairs and mirrors, the fairy plates and cups, were her property) stopped my proceedings; and then, for lack of other occupation, I fell to breathing on the frost-flowers with which the window was fretted, and thus clearing a space in the glass through which I might look out on the grounds, where all was still and petrified under the influence of a hard frost. From this window were visible the porter’s lodge and the carriage-road, and just as I had dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage veiling the panes as left room to look out, I saw the gates thrown open and a carriage roll through. I watched it ascending the drive with indifference; carriages often came to Gateshead, but none ever brought visitors in whom I was interested; it stopped in front of the house, the door-bell rang loudly, the new-comer was admitted. All this being nothing to me, my vacant attention soon found livelier attraction in the spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and chirruped on the twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the casement. The remains of my breakfast of bread and milk stood on the table, and having crumbled a morsel of roll, I was tugging at the sash to put out the crumbs on the window-sill, when Bessie came running upstairs into the nursery. “Miss Jane, take off your pinafore; what are you doing there? Have you washed your hands and face this morning?” I gave another tug before I answered, for I wanted the bird to be secure of its bread: the sash yielded; I scattered the crumbs, some on the stone sill, some on the cherry-tree bough, then, closing the window, I replied— “No, Bessie; I have only just finished dusting.” “Troublesome, careless child! and what are you doing now? You look quite red, as if you had been about some mischief: what were you opening the window for?” I was spared the trouble of answering, for Bessie seemed in too great a hurry to listen to explanations; she hauled me to the washstand, inflicted a merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face and hands with soap, water, and a coarse towel; disciplined my head with a bristly brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying me to the top of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted in the breakfast-room. I would have asked who wanted me: I would have demanded if Mrs. Reed was there; but Bessie was already gone, and had closed the nursery-door upon me. I slowly descended. For nearly three months, I had never been called to Mrs. Reed’s presence; restricted so long to the nursery, the breakfast, dining, and drawing-rooms were become for me awful regions, on which it dismayed me to intrude. I now stood in the empty hall; before me was the breakfast-room door, and I stopped, intimidated and trembling. What a miserable little poltroon had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those days! I feared to return to the nursery, and feared to go forward to the parlour; ten minutes I stood in agitated hesitation; the vehement ringing of the breakfast-room bell decided me; I _must_ enter. “Who could want me?” I asked inwardly, as with both hands I turned the stiff door-handle, which, for a second or two, resisted my efforts. “What should I see besides Aunt Reed in the apartment?—a man or a woman?” The handle turned, the door unclosed, and passing through and curtseying low, I looked up at—a black pillar!—such, at least, appeared to me, at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug: the grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital. Mrs. Reed occupied her usual seat by the fireside; she made a signal to me to approach; I did so, and she introduced me to the stony stranger with the words: “This is the little girl respecting whom I applied to you.” _He_, for it was a man, turned his head slowly towards where I stood, and having examined me with the two inquisitive-looking grey eyes which twinkled under a pair of bushy brows, said solemnly, and in a bass voice, “Her size is small: what is her age?” “Ten years.” “So much?” was the doubtful answer; and he prolonged his scrutiny for some minutes. Presently he addressed me—“Your name, little girl?” “Jane Eyre, sir.” In uttering these words I looked up: he seemed to me a tall gentleman; but then I was very little; his features were large, and they and all the lines of his frame were equally harsh and prim. “Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good child?” Impossible to reply to this in the affirmative: my little world held a contrary opinion: I was silent. Mrs. Reed answered for me by an expressive shake of the head, adding soon, “Perhaps the less said on that subject the better, Mr. Brocklehurst.” “Sorry indeed to hear it! she and I must have some talk;” and bending from the perpendicular, he installed his person in the arm-chair opposite Mrs. Reed’s. “Come here,” he said. I stepped across the rug; he placed me square and straight before him. What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level with mine! what a great nose! and what a mouth! and what large prominent teeth! “No sight so sad as that of a naughty child,” he began, “especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?” “They go to hell,” was my ready and orthodox answer. “And what is hell? Can you tell me that?” “A pit full of fire.” “And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?” “No, sir.” “What must you do to avoid it?” I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must keep in good health, and not die.” “How can you keep in good health? Children younger than you die daily. I buried a little child of five years old only a day or two since,—a good little child, whose soul is now in heaven. It is to be feared the same could not be said of you were you to be called hence.” Not being in a condition to remove his doubt, I only cast my eyes down on the two large feet planted on the rug, and sighed, wishing myself far enough away. “I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent of ever having been the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress.” “Benefactress! benefactress!” said I inwardly: “they all call Mrs. Reed my benefactress; if so, a benefactress is a disagreeable thing.” “Do you say your prayers night and morning?” continued my interrogator. “Yes, sir.” “Do you read your Bible?” “Sometimes.” “With pleasure? Are you fond of it?” “I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah.” “And the Psalms? I hope you like them?” “No, sir.” “No? oh, shocking! I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread-nut to eat or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: ‘Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms;’ says he, ‘I wish to be a little angel here below;’ he then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety.” “Psalms are not interesting,” I remarked. “That proves you have a wicked heart; and you must pray to God to change it: to give you a new and clean one: to take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” I was about to propound a question, touching the manner in which that operation of changing my heart was to be performed, when Mrs. Reed interposed, telling me to sit down; she then proceeded to carry on the conversation herself. “Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote to you three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the character and disposition I could wish: should you admit her into Lowood school, I should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to keep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard against her worst fault, a tendency to deceit. I mention this in your hearing, Jane, that you may not attempt to impose on Mr. Brocklehurst.” Well might I dread, well might I dislike Mrs. Reed; for it was her nature to wound me cruelly; never was I happy in her presence; however carefully I obeyed, however strenuously I strove to please her, my efforts were still repulsed and repaid by such sentences as the above. Now, uttered before a stranger, the accusation cut me to the heart; I dimly perceived that she was already obliterating hope from the new phase of existence which she destined me to enter; I felt, though I could not have expressed the feeling, that she was sowing aversion and unkindness along my future path; I saw myself transformed under Mr. Brocklehurst’s eye into an artful, noxious child, and what could I do to remedy the injury? “Nothing, indeed,” thought I, as I struggled to repress a sob, and hastily wiped away some tears, the impotent evidences of my anguish. “Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a child,” said Mr. Brocklehurst; “it is akin to falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in the lake burning with fire and brimstone; she shall, however, be watched, Mrs. Reed. I will speak to Miss Temple and the teachers.” “I should wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects,” continued my benefactress; “to be made useful, to be kept humble: as for the vacations, she will, with your permission, spend them always at Lowood.” “Your decisions are perfectly judicious, madam,” returned Mr. Brocklehurst. “Humility is a Christian grace, and one peculiarly appropriate to the pupils of Lowood; I, therefore, direct that especial care shall be bestowed on its cultivation amongst them. I have studied how best to mortify in them the worldly sentiment of pride; and, only the other day, I had a pleasing proof of my success. My second daughter, Augusta, went with her mama to visit the school, and on her return she exclaimed: ‘Oh, dear papa, how quiet and plain all the girls at Lowood look, with their hair combed behind their ears, and their long pinafores, and those little holland pockets outside their frocks—they are almost like poor people’s children! and,’ said she, ‘they looked at my dress and mama’s, as if they had never seen a silk gown before.’” “This is the state of things I quite approve,” returned Mrs. Reed; “had I sought all England over, I could scarcely have found a system more exactly fitting a child like Jane Eyre. Consistency, my dear Mr. Brocklehurst; I advocate consistency in all things.” “Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties; and it has been observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment of Lowood: plain fare, simple attire, unsophisticated accommodations, hardy and active habits; such is the order of the day in the house and its inhabitants.” “Quite right, sir. I may then depend upon this child being received as a pupil at Lowood, and there being trained in conformity to her position and prospects?” “Madam, you may: she shall be placed in that nursery of chosen plants, and I trust she will show herself grateful for the inestimable privilege of her election.” “I will send her, then, as soon as possible, Mr. Brocklehurst; for, I assure you, I feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility that was becoming too irksome.” “No doubt, no doubt, madam; and now I wish you good morning. I shall return to Brocklehurst Hall in the course of a week or two: my good friend, the Archdeacon, will not permit me to leave him sooner. I shall send Miss Temple notice that she is to expect a new girl, so that there will be no difficulty about receiving her. Good-bye.” “Good-bye, Mr. Brocklehurst; remember me to Mrs. and Miss Brocklehurst, and to Augusta and Theodore, and Master Broughton Brocklehurst.” “I will, madam. Little girl, here is a book entitled the ‘Child’s Guide’; read it with prayer, especially that part containing ‘An account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G——, a naughty child addicted to falsehood and deceit.’” With these words Mr. Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn in a cover, and having rung for his carriage, he departed. Mrs. Reed and I were left alone: some minutes passed in silence; she was sewing, I was watching her. Mrs. Reed might be at that time some six or seven and thirty; she was a woman of robust frame, square-shouldered and strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not obese: she had a somewhat large face, the under jaw being much developed and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth; her skin was dark and opaque, her hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a bell—illness never came near her; she was an exact, clever manager; her household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control; her children only at times defied her authority and laughed it to scorn; she dressed well, and had a presence and port calculated to set off handsome attire. Sitting on a low stool, a few yards from her arm-chair, I examined her figure; I perused her features. In my hand I held the tract containing the sudden death of the Liar, to which narrative my attention had been pointed as to an appropriate warning. What had just passed; what Mrs. Reed had said concerning me to Mr. Brocklehurst; the whole tenor of their conversation, was recent, raw, and stinging in my mind; I had felt every word as acutely as I had heard it plainly, and a passion of resentment fomented now within me. Mrs. Reed looked up from her work; her eye settled on mine, her fingers at the same time suspended their nimble movements. “Go out of the room; return to the nursery,” was her mandate. My look or something else must have struck her as offensive, for she spoke with extreme though suppressed irritation. I got up, I went to the door; I came back again; I walked to the window, across the room, then close up to her. _Speak_ I must: I had been trodden on severely, and _must_ turn: but how? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence— “I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved _you;_ but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed; and this book about the liar, you may give to your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I.” Mrs. Reed’s hands still lay on her work inactive: her eye of ice continued to dwell freezingly on mine. “What more have you to say?” she asked, rather in the tone in which a person might address an opponent of adult age than such as is ordinarily used to a child. That eye of hers, that voice stirred every antipathy I had. Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, I continued— “I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.” “How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?” “How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the _truth_. You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me back—roughly and violently thrust me back—into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, ‘Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!’ And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale. People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. _You_ are deceitful!” How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty. Not without cause was this sentiment: Mrs. Reed looked frightened; her work had slipped from her knee; she was lifting up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even twisting her face as if she would cry. “Jane, you are under a mistake: what is the matter with you? Why do you tremble so violently? Would you like to drink some water?” “No, Mrs. Reed.” “Is there anything else you wish for, Jane? I assure you, I desire to be your friend.” “Not you. You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad character, a deceitful disposition; and I’ll let everybody at Lowood know what you are, and what you have done.” “Jane, you don’t understand these things: children must be corrected for their faults.” “Deceit is not my fault!” I cried out in a savage, high voice. “But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow: and now return to the nursery—there’s a dear—and lie down a little.” “I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.” “I will indeed send her to school soon,” murmured Mrs. Reed _sotto voce_; and gathering up her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment. I was left there alone—winner of the field. It was the hardest battle I had fought, and the first victory I had gained: I stood awhile on the rug, where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed my conqueror’s solitude. First, I smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition, when half-an-hour’s silence and reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my hated and hating position. Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed’s pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature. I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking; fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of sombre indignation. I took a book—some Arabian tales; I sat down and endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of the subject; my own thoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found fascinating. I opened the glass-door in the breakfast-room: the shrubbery was quite still: the black frost reigned, unbroken by sun or breeze, through the grounds. I covered my head and arms with the skirt of my frock, and went out to walk in a part of the plantation which was quite sequestrated; but I found no pleasure in the silent trees, the falling fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past winds in heaps, and now stiffened together. I leaned against a gate, and looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding, where the short grass was nipped and blanched. It was a very grey day; a most opaque sky, “onding on snaw,” canopied all; thence flakes fell at intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without melting. I stood, a wretched child enough, whispering to myself over and over again, “What shall I do?—what shall I do?” All at once I heard a clear voice call, “Miss Jane! where are you? Come to lunch!” It was Bessie, I knew well enough; but I did not stir; her light step came tripping down the path. “You naughty little thing!” she said. “Why don’t you come when you are called?” Bessie’s presence, compared with the thoughts over which I had been brooding, seemed cheerful; even though, as usual, she was somewhat cross. The fact is, after my conflict with and victory over Mrs. Reed, I was not disposed to care much for the nursemaid’s transitory anger; and I _was_ disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of heart. I just put my two arms round her and said, “Come, Bessie! don’t scold.” The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated to indulge in: somehow it pleased her. “You are a strange child, Miss Jane,” she said, as she looked down at me; “a little roving, solitary thing: and you are going to school, I suppose?” I nodded. “And won’t you be sorry to leave poor Bessie?” “What does Bessie care for me? She is always scolding me.” “Because you’re such a queer, frightened, shy little thing. You should be bolder.” “What! to get more knocks?” “Nonsense! But you are rather put upon, that’s certain. My mother said, when she came to see me last week, that she would not like a little one of her own to be in your place.—Now, come in, and I’ve some good news for you.” “I don’t think you have, Bessie.” “Child! what do you mean? What sorrowful eyes you fix on me! Well, but Missis and the young ladies and Master John are going out to tea this afternoon, and you shall have tea with me. I’ll ask cook to bake you a little cake, and then you shall help me to look over your drawers; for I am soon to pack your trunk. Missis intends you to leave Gateshead in a day or two, and you shall choose what toys you like to take with you.” “Bessie, you must promise not to scold me any more till I go.” “Well, I will; but mind you are a very good girl, and don’t be afraid of me. Don’t start when I chance to speak rather sharply; it’s so provoking.” “I don’t think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Bessie, because I have got used to you, and I shall soon have another set of people to dread.” “If you dread them they’ll dislike you.” “As you do, Bessie?” “I don’t dislike you, Miss; I believe I am fonder of you than of all the others.” “You don’t show it.” “You little sharp thing! you’ve got quite a new way of talking. What makes you so venturesome and hardy?” “Why, I shall soon be away from you, and besides”—I was going to say something about what had passed between me and Mrs. Reed, but on second thoughts I considered it better to remain silent on that head. “And so you’re glad to leave me?” “Not at all, Bessie; indeed, just now I’m rather sorry.” “Just now! and rather! How coolly my little lady says it! I dare say now if I were to ask you for a kiss you wouldn’t give it me: you’d say you’d _rather_ not.” “I’ll kiss you and welcome: bend your head down.” Bessie stooped; we mutually embraced, and I followed her into the house quite comforted. That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony; and in the evening Bessie told me some of her most enchanting stories, and sang me some of her sweetest songs. Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine. ', 'Five o’clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of January, when Bessie brought a candle into my closet and found me already up and nearly dressed. I had risen half-an-hour before her entrance, and had washed my face, and put on my clothes by the light of a half-moon just setting, whose rays streamed through the narrow window near my crib. I was to leave Gateshead that day by a coach which passed the lodge gates at six A.M. Bessie was the only person yet risen; she had lit a fire in the nursery, where she now proceeded to make my breakfast. Few children can eat when excited with the thoughts of a journey; nor could I. Bessie, having pressed me in vain to take a few spoonfuls of the boiled milk and bread she had prepared for me, wrapped up some biscuits in a paper and put them into my bag; then she helped me on with my pelisse and bonnet, and wrapping herself in a shawl, she and I left the nursery. As we passed Mrs. Reed’s bedroom, she said, “Will you go in and bid Missis good-bye?” “No, Bessie: she came to my crib last night when you were gone down to supper, and said I need not disturb her in the morning, or my cousins either; and she told me to remember that she had always been my best friend, and to speak of her and be grateful to her accordingly.” “What did you say, Miss?” “Nothing: I covered my face with the bedclothes, and turned from her to the wall.” “That was wrong, Miss Jane.” “It was quite right, Bessie. Your Missis has not been my friend: she has been my foe.” “O Miss Jane! don’t say so!” “Good-bye to Gateshead!” cried I, as we passed through the hall and went out at the front door. The moon was set, and it was very dark; Bessie carried a lantern, whose light glanced on wet steps and gravel road sodden by a recent thaw. Raw and chill was the winter morning: my teeth chattered as I hastened down the drive. There was a light in the porter’s lodge: when we reached it, we found the porter’s wife just kindling her fire: my trunk, which had been carried down the evening before, stood corded at the door. It wanted but a few minutes of six, and shortly after that hour had struck, the distant roll of wheels announced the coming coach; I went to the door and watched its lamps approach rapidly through the gloom. “Is she going by herself?” asked the porter’s wife. “Yes.” “And how far is it?” “Fifty miles.” “What a long way! I wonder Mrs. Reed is not afraid to trust her so far alone.” The coach drew up; there it was at the gates with its four horses and its top laden with passengers: the guard and coachman loudly urged haste; my trunk was hoisted up; I was taken from Bessie’s neck, to which I clung with kisses. “Be sure and take good care of her,” cried she to the guard, as he lifted me into the inside. “Ay, ay!” was the answer: the door was slapped to, a voice exclaimed “All right,” and on we drove. Thus was I severed from Bessie and Gateshead; thus whirled away to unknown, and, as I then deemed, remote and mysterious regions. I remember but little of the journey; I only know that the day seemed to me of a preternatural length, and that we appeared to travel over hundreds of miles of road. We passed through several towns, and in one, a very large one, the coach stopped; the horses were taken out, and the passengers alighted to dine. I was carried into an inn, where the guard wanted me to have some dinner; but, as I had no appetite, he left me in an immense room with a fireplace at each end, a chandelier pendent from the ceiling, and a little red gallery high up against the wall filled with musical instruments. Here I walked about for a long time, feeling very strange, and mortally apprehensive of some one coming in and kidnapping me; for I believed in kidnappers, their exploits having frequently figured in Bessie’s fireside chronicles. At last the guard returned; once more I was stowed away in the coach, my protector mounted his own seat, sounded his hollow horn, and away we rattled over the “stony street” of L——. The afternoon came on wet and somewhat misty: as it waned into dusk, I began to feel that we were getting very far indeed from Gateshead: we ceased to pass through towns; the country changed; great grey hills heaved up round the horizon: as twilight deepened, we descended a valley, dark with wood, and long after night had overclouded the prospect, I heard a wild wind rushing amongst trees. Lulled by the sound, I at last dropped asleep; I had not long slumbered when the sudden cessation of motion awoke me; the coach-door was open, and a person like a servant was standing at it: I saw her face and dress by the light of the lamps. “Is there a little girl called Jane Eyre here?” she asked. I answered “Yes,” and was then lifted out; my trunk was handed down, and the coach instantly drove away. I was stiff with long sitting, and bewildered with the noise and motion of the coach: gathering my faculties, I looked about me. Rain, wind, and darkness filled the air; nevertheless, I dimly discerned a wall before me and a door open in it; through this door I passed with my new guide: she shut and locked it behind her. There was now visible a house or houses—for the building spread far—with many windows, and lights burning in some; we went up a broad pebbly path, splashing wet, and were admitted at a door; then the servant led me through a passage into a room with a fire, where she left me alone. I stood and warmed my numbed fingers over the blaze, then I looked round; there was no candle, but the uncertain light from the hearth showed, by intervals, papered walls, carpet, curtains, shining mahogany furniture: it was a parlour, not so spacious or splendid as the drawing-room at Gateshead, but comfortable enough. I was puzzling to make out the subject of a picture on the wall, when the door opened, and an individual carrying a light entered; another followed close behind. The first was a tall lady with dark hair, dark eyes, and a pale and large forehead; her figure was partly enveloped in a shawl, her countenance was grave, her bearing erect. “The child is very young to be sent alone,” said she, putting her candle down on the table. She considered me attentively for a minute or two, then further added— “She had better be put to bed soon; she looks tired: are you tired?” she asked, placing her hand on my shoulder. “A little, ma’am.” “And hungry too, no doubt: let her have some supper before she goes to bed, Miss Miller. Is this the first time you have left your parents to come to school, my little girl?” I explained to her that I had no parents. She inquired how long they had been dead: then how old I was, what was my name, whether I could read, write, and sew a little: then she touched my cheek gently with her forefinger, and saying, “She hoped I should be a good child,” dismissed me along with Miss Miller. The lady I had left might be about twenty-nine; the one who went with me appeared some years younger: the first impressed me by her voice, look, and air. Miss Miller was more ordinary; ruddy in complexion, though of a careworn countenance; hurried in gait and action, like one who had always a multiplicity of tasks on hand: she looked, indeed, what I afterwards found she really was, an under-teacher. Led by her, I passed from compartment to compartment, from passage to passage, of a large and irregular building; till, emerging from the total and somewhat dreary silence pervading that portion of the house we had traversed, we came upon the hum of many voices, and presently entered a wide, long room, with great deal tables, two at each end, on each of which burnt a pair of candles, and seated all round on benches, a congregation of girls of every age, from nine or ten to twenty. Seen by the dim light of the dips, their number to me appeared countless, though not in reality exceeding eighty; they were uniformly dressed in brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion, and long holland pinafores. It was the hour of study; they were engaged in conning over their to-morrow’s task, and the hum I had heard was the combined result of their whispered repetitions. Miss Miller signed to me to sit on a bench near the door, then walking up to the top of the long room she cried out— “Monitors, collect the lesson-books and put them away!” Four tall girls arose from different tables, and going round, gathered the books and removed them. Miss Miller again gave the word of command— “Monitors, fetch the supper-trays!” The tall girls went out and returned presently, each bearing a tray, with portions of something, I knew not what, arranged thereon, and a pitcher of water and mug in the middle of each tray. The portions were handed round; those who liked took a draught of the water, the mug being common to all. When it came to my turn, I drank, for I was thirsty, but did not touch the food, excitement and fatigue rendering me incapable of eating: I now saw, however, that it was a thin oaten cake shared into fragments. The meal over, prayers were read by Miss Miller, and the classes filed off, two and two, upstairs. Overpowered by this time with weariness, I scarcely noticed what sort of a place the bedroom was, except that, like the schoolroom, I saw it was very long. To-night I was to be Miss Miller’s bed-fellow; she helped me to undress: when laid down I glanced at the long rows of beds, each of which was quickly filled with two occupants; in ten minutes the single light was extinguished, and amidst silence and complete darkness I fell asleep. The night passed rapidly: I was too tired even to dream; I only once awoke to hear the wind rave in furious gusts, and the rain fall in torrents, and to be sensible that Miss Miller had taken her place by my side. When I again unclosed my eyes, a loud bell was ringing; the girls were up and dressing; day had not yet begun to dawn, and a rushlight or two burned in the room. I too rose reluctantly; it was bitter cold, and I dressed as well as I could for shivering, and washed when there was a basin at liberty, which did not occur soon, as there was but one basin to six girls, on the stands down the middle of the room. Again the bell rang: all formed in file, two and two, and in that order descended the stairs and entered the cold and dimly lit schoolroom: here prayers were read by Miss Miller; afterwards she called out— “Form classes!” A great tumult succeeded for some minutes, during which Miss Miller repeatedly exclaimed, “Silence!” and “Order!” When it subsided, I saw them all drawn up in four semicircles, before four chairs, placed at the four tables; all held books in their hands, and a great book, like a Bible, lay on each table, before the vacant seat. A pause of some seconds succeeded, filled up by the low, vague hum of numbers; Miss Miller walked from class to class, hushing this indefinite sound. A distant bell tinkled: immediately three ladies entered the room, each walked to a table and took her seat; Miss Miller assumed the fourth vacant chair, which was that nearest the door, and around which the smallest of the children were assembled: to this inferior class I was called, and placed at the bottom of it. Business now began: the day’s Collect was repeated, then certain texts of Scripture were said, and to these succeeded a protracted reading of chapters in the Bible, which lasted an hour. By the time that exercise was terminated, day had fully dawned. The indefatigable bell now sounded for the fourth time: the classes were marshalled and marched into another room to breakfast: how glad I was to behold a prospect of getting something to eat! I was now nearly sick from inanition, having taken so little the day before. The refectory was a great, low-ceiled, gloomy room; on two long tables smoked basins of something hot, which, however, to my dismay, sent forth an odour far from inviting. I saw a universal manifestation of discontent when the fumes of the repast met the nostrils of those destined to swallow it; from the van of the procession, the tall girls of the first class, rose the whispered words— “Disgusting! The porridge is burnt again!” “Silence!” ejaculated a voice; not that of Miss Miller, but one of the upper teachers, a little and dark personage, smartly dressed, but of somewhat morose aspect, who installed herself at the top of one table, while a more buxom lady presided at the other. I looked in vain for her I had first seen the night before; she was not visible: Miss Miller occupied the foot of the table where I sat, and a strange, foreign-looking, elderly lady, the French teacher, as I afterwards found, took the corresponding seat at the other board. A long grace was said and a hymn sung; then a servant brought in some tea for the teachers, and the meal began. Ravenous, and now very faint, I devoured a spoonful or two of my portion without thinking of its taste; but the first edge of hunger blunted, I perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess; burnt porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over it. The spoons were moved slowly: I saw each girl taste her food and try to swallow it; but in most cases the effort was soon relinquished. Breakfast was over, and none had breakfasted. Thanks being returned for what we had not got, and a second hymn chanted, the refectory was evacuated for the schoolroom. I was one of the last to go out, and in passing the tables, I saw one teacher take a basin of the porridge and taste it; she looked at the others; all their countenances expressed displeasure, and one of them, the stout one, whispered— “Abominable stuff! How shameful!” A quarter of an hour passed before lessons again began, during which the schoolroom was in a glorious tumult; for that space of time it seemed to be permitted to talk loud and more freely, and they used their privilege. The whole conversation ran on the breakfast, which one and all abused roundly. Poor things! it was the sole consolation they had. Miss Miller was now the only teacher in the room: a group of great girls standing about her spoke with serious and sullen gestures. I heard the name of Mr. Brocklehurst pronounced by some lips; at which Miss Miller shook her head disapprovingly; but she made no great effort to check the general wrath; doubtless she shared in it. A clock in the schoolroom struck nine; Miss Miller left her circle, and standing in the middle of the room, cried— “Silence! To your seats!” Discipline prevailed: in five minutes the confused throng was resolved into order, and comparative silence quelled the Babel clamour of tongues. The upper teachers now punctually resumed their posts: but still, all seemed to wait. Ranged on benches down the sides of the room, the eighty girls sat motionless and erect; a quaint assemblage they appeared, all with plain locks combed from their faces, not a curl visible; in brown dresses, made high and surrounded by a narrow tucker about the throat, with little pockets of holland (shaped something like a Highlander’s purse) tied in front of their frocks, and destined to serve the purpose of a work-bag: all, too, wearing woollen stockings and country-made shoes, fastened with brass buckles. Above twenty of those clad in this costume were full-grown girls, or rather young women; it suited them ill, and gave an air of oddity even to the prettiest. I was still looking at them, and also at intervals examining the teachers—none of whom precisely pleased me; for the stout one was a little coarse, the dark one not a little fierce, the foreigner harsh and grotesque, and Miss Miller, poor thing! looked purple, weather-beaten, and over-worked—when, as my eye wandered from face to face, the whole school rose simultaneously, as if moved by a common spring. What was the matter? I had heard no order given: I was puzzled. Ere I had gathered my wits, the classes were again seated: but as all eyes were now turned to one point, mine followed the general direction, and encountered the personage who had received me last night. She stood at the bottom of the long room, on the hearth; for there was a fire at each end; she surveyed the two rows of girls silently and gravely. Miss Miller approaching, seemed to ask her a question, and having received her answer, went back to her place, and said aloud— “Monitor of the first class, fetch the globes!” While the direction was being executed, the lady consulted moved slowly up the room. I suppose I have a considerable organ of veneration, for I retain yet the sense of admiring awe with which my eyes traced her steps. Seen now, in broad daylight, she looked tall, fair, and shapely; brown eyes with a benignant light in their irids, and a fine pencilling of long lashes round, relieved the whiteness of her large front; on each of her temples her hair, of a very dark brown, was clustered in round curls, according to the fashion of those times, when neither smooth bands nor long ringlets were in vogue; her dress, also in the mode of the day, was of purple cloth, relieved by a sort of Spanish trimming of black velvet; a gold watch (watches were not so common then as now) shone at her girdle. Let the reader add, to complete the picture, refined features; a complexion, if pale, clear; and a stately air and carriage, and he will have, at least, as clearly as words can give it, a correct idea of the exterior of Miss Temple—Maria Temple, as I afterwards saw the name written in a prayer-book intrusted to me to carry to church. The superintendent of Lowood (for such was this lady) having taken her seat before a pair of globes placed on one of the tables, summoned the first class round her, and commenced giving a lesson on geography; the lower classes were called by the teachers: repetitions in history, grammar, &c., went on for an hour; writing and arithmetic succeeded, and music lessons were given by Miss Temple to some of the elder girls. The duration of each lesson was measured by the clock, which at last struck twelve. The superintendent rose— “I have a word to address to the pupils,” said she. The tumult of cessation from lessons was already breaking forth, but it sank at her voice. She went on— “You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat; you must be hungry:—I have ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese shall be served to all.” The teachers looked at her with a sort of surprise. “It is to be done on my responsibility,” she added, in an explanatory tone to them, and immediately afterwards left the room. The bread and cheese was presently brought in and distributed, to the high delight and refreshment of the whole school. The order was now given “To the garden!” Each put on a coarse straw bonnet, with strings of coloured calico, and a cloak of grey frieze. I was similarly equipped, and, following the stream, I made my way into the open air. The garden was a wide inclosure, surrounded with walls so high as to exclude every glimpse of prospect; a covered verandah ran down one side, and broad walks bordered a middle space divided into scores of little beds: these beds were assigned as gardens for the pupils to cultivate, and each bed had an owner. When full of flowers they would doubtless look pretty; but now, at the latter end of January, all was wintry blight and brown decay. I shuddered as I stood and looked round me: it was an inclement day for outdoor exercise; not positively rainy, but darkened by a drizzling yellow fog; all under foot was still soaking wet with the floods of yesterday. The stronger among the girls ran about and engaged in active games, but sundry pale and thin ones herded together for shelter and warmth in the verandah; and amongst these, as the dense mist penetrated to their shivering frames, I heard frequently the sound of a hollow cough. As yet I had spoken to no one, nor did anybody seem to take notice of me; I stood lonely enough: but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed; it did not oppress me much. I leant against a pillar of the verandah, drew my grey mantle close about me, and, trying to forget the cold which nipped me without, and the unsatisfied hunger which gnawed me within, delivered myself up to the employment of watching and thinking. My reflections were too undefined and fragmentary to merit record: I hardly yet knew where I was; Gateshead and my past life seemed floated away to an immeasurable distance; the present was vague and strange, and of the future I could form no conjecture. I looked round the convent-like garden, and then up at the house—a large building, half of which seemed grey and old, the other half quite new. The new part, containing the schoolroom and dormitory, was lit by mullioned and latticed windows, which gave it a church-like aspect; a stone tablet over the door bore this inscription:— LOWOOD INSTITUTION. This portion was rebuilt A.D. ——, by Naomi Brocklehurst, of Brocklehurst Hall, in this county. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”—St. Matt. v. 16. I read these words over and over again: I felt that an explanation belonged to them, and was unable fully to penetrate their import. I was still pondering the signification of “Institution,” and endeavouring to make out a connection between the first words and the verse of Scripture, when the sound of a cough close behind me made me turn my head. I saw a girl sitting on a stone bench near; she was bent over a book, on the perusal of which she seemed intent: from where I stood I could see the title—it was “Rasselas;” a name that struck me as strange, and consequently attractive. In turning a leaf she happened to look up, and I said to her directly— “Is your book interesting?” I had already formed the intention of asking her to lend it to me some day. “I like it,” she answered, after a pause of a second or two, during which she examined me. “What is it about?” I continued. I hardly know where I found the hardihood thus to open a conversation with a stranger; the step was contrary to my nature and habits: but I think her occupation touched a chord of sympathy somewhere; for I too liked reading, though of a frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial. “You may look at it,” replied the girl, offering me the book. I did so; a brief examination convinced me that the contents were less taking than the title: “Rasselas” looked dull to my trifling taste; I saw nothing about fairies, nothing about genii; no bright variety seemed spread over the closely-printed pages. I returned it to her; she received it quietly, and without saying anything she was about to relapse into her former studious mood: again I ventured to disturb her— “Can you tell me what the writing on that stone over the door means? What is Lowood Institution?” “This house where you are come to live.” “And why do they call it Institution? Is it in any way different from other schools?” “It is partly a charity-school: you and I, and all the rest of us, are charity-children. I suppose you are an orphan: are not either your father or your mother dead?” “Both died before I can remember.” “Well, all the girls here have lost either one or both parents, and this is called an institution for educating orphans.” “Do we pay no money? Do they keep us for nothing?” “We pay, or our friends pay, fifteen pounds a year for each.” “Then why do they call us charity-children?” “Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teaching, and the deficiency is supplied by subscription.” “Who subscribes?” “Different benevolent-minded ladies and gentlemen in this neighbourhood and in London.” “Who was Naomi Brocklehurst?” “The lady who built the new part of this house as that tablet records, and whose son overlooks and directs everything here.” “Why?” “Because he is treasurer and manager of the establishment.” “Then this house does not belong to that tall lady who wears a watch, and who said we were to have some bread and cheese?” “To Miss Temple? Oh, no! I wish it did: she has to answer to Mr. Brocklehurst for all she does. Mr. Brocklehurst buys all our food and all our clothes.” “Does he live here?” “No—two miles off, at a large hall.” “Is he a good man?” “He is a clergyman, and is said to do a great deal of good.” “Did you say that tall lady was called Miss Temple?” “Yes.” “And what are the other teachers called?” “The one with red cheeks is called Miss Smith; she attends to the work, and cuts out—for we make our own clothes, our frocks, and pelisses, and everything; the little one with black hair is Miss Scatcherd; she teaches history and grammar, and hears the second class repetitions; and the one who wears a shawl, and has a pocket-handkerchief tied to her side with a yellow ribband, is Madame Pierrot: she comes from Lisle, in France, and teaches French.” “Do you like the teachers?” “Well enough.” “Do you like the little black one, and the Madame ——?—I cannot pronounce her name as you do.” “Miss Scatcherd is hasty—you must take care not to offend her; Madame Pierrot is not a bad sort of person.” “But Miss Temple is the best—isn’t she?” “Miss Temple is very good and very clever; she is above the rest, because she knows far more than they do.” “Have you been long here?” “Two years.” “Are you an orphan?” “My mother is dead.” “Are you happy here?” “You ask rather too many questions. I have given you answers enough for the present: now I want to read.” But at that moment the summons sounded for dinner; all re-entered the house. The odour which now filled the refectory was scarcely more appetising than that which had regaled our nostrils at breakfast: the dinner was served in two huge tin-plated vessels, whence rose a strong steam redolent of rancid fat. I found the mess to consist of indifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rusty meat, mixed and cooked together. Of this preparation a tolerably abundant plateful was apportioned to each pupil. I ate what I could, and wondered within myself whether every day’s fare would be like this. After dinner, we immediately adjourned to the schoolroom: lessons recommenced, and were continued till five o’clock. The only marked event of the afternoon was, that I saw the girl with whom I had conversed in the verandah dismissed in disgrace by Miss Scatcherd from a history class, and sent to stand in the middle of the large schoolroom. The punishment seemed to me in a high degree ignominious, especially for so great a girl—she looked thirteen or upwards. I expected she would show signs of great distress and shame; but to my surprise she neither wept nor blushed: composed, though grave, she stood, the central mark of all eyes. “How can she bear it so quietly—so firmly?” I asked of myself. “Were I in her place, it seems to me I should wish the earth to open and swallow me up. She looks as if she were thinking of something beyond her punishment—beyond her situation: of something not round her nor before her. I have heard of day-dreams—is she in a day-dream now? Her eyes are fixed on the floor, but I am sure they do not see it—her sight seems turned in, gone down into her heart: she is looking at what she can remember, I believe; not at what is really present. I wonder what sort of a girl she is—whether good or naughty.” Soon after five P.M. we had another meal, consisting of a small mug of coffee, and half-a-slice of brown bread. I devoured my bread and drank my coffee with relish; but I should have been glad of as much more—I was still hungry. Half-an-hour’s recreation succeeded, then study; then the glass of water and the piece of oat-cake, prayers, and bed. Such was my first day at Lowood. ', 'The next day commenced as before, getting up and dressing by rushlight; but this morning we were obliged to dispense with the ceremony of washing; the water in the pitchers was frozen. A change had taken place in the weather the preceding evening, and a keen north-east wind, whistling through the crevices of our bedroom windows all night long, had made us shiver in our beds, and turned the contents of the ewers to ice. Before the long hour and a half of prayers and Bible-reading was over, I felt ready to perish with cold. Breakfast-time came at last, and this morning the porridge was not burnt; the quality was eatable, the quantity small. How small my portion seemed! I wished it had been doubled. In the course of the day I was enrolled a member of the fourth class, and regular tasks and occupations were assigned me: hitherto, I had only been a spectator of the proceedings at Lowood; I was now to become an actor therein. At first, being little accustomed to learn by heart, the lessons appeared to me both long and difficult; the frequent change from task to task, too, bewildered me; and I was glad when, about three o’clock in the afternoon, Miss Smith put into my hands a border of muslin two yards long, together with needle, thimble, &c., and sent me to sit in a quiet corner of the schoolroom, with directions to hem the same. At that hour most of the others were sewing likewise; but one class still stood round Miss Scatcherd’s chair reading, and as all was quiet, the subject of their lessons could be heard, together with the manner in which each girl acquitted herself, and the animadversions or commendations of Miss Scatcherd on the performance. It was English history: among the readers I observed my acquaintance of the verandah: at the commencement of the lesson, her place had been at the top of the class, but for some error of pronunciation, or some inattention to stops, she was suddenly sent to the very bottom. Even in that obscure position, Miss Scatcherd continued to make her an object of constant notice: she was continually addressing to her such phrases as the following:— “Burns” (such it seems was her name: the girls here were all called by their surnames, as boys are elsewhere), “Burns, you are standing on the side of your shoe; turn your toes out immediately.” “Burns, you poke your chin most unpleasantly; draw it in.” “Burns, I insist on your holding your head up; I will not have you before me in that attitude,” &c. &c. A chapter having been read through twice, the books were closed and the girls examined. The lesson had comprised part of the reign of Charles I., and there were sundry questions about tonnage and poundage and ship-money, which most of them appeared unable to answer; still, every little difficulty was solved instantly when it reached Burns: her memory seemed to have retained the substance of the whole lesson, and she was ready with answers on every point. I kept expecting that Miss Scatcherd would praise her attention; but, instead of that, she suddenly cried out— “You dirty, disagreeable girl! you have never cleaned your nails this morning!” Burns made no answer: I wondered at her silence. “Why,” thought I, “does she not explain that she could neither clean her nails nor wash her face, as the water was frozen?” My attention was now called off by Miss Smith desiring me to hold a skein of thread: while she was winding it, she talked to me from time to time, asking whether I had ever been at school before, whether I could mark, stitch, knit, &c.; till she dismissed me, I could not pursue my observations on Miss Scatcherd’s movements. When I returned to my seat, that lady was just delivering an order of which I did not catch the import; but Burns immediately left the class, and going into the small inner room where the books were kept, returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a respectful curtesy; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns’ eye; and, while I paused from my sewing, because my fingers quivered at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression. “Hardened girl!” exclaimed Miss Scatcherd; “nothing can correct you of your slatternly habits: carry the rod away.” Burns obeyed: I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the book-closet; she was just putting back her handkerchief into her pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek. The play-hour in the evening I thought the pleasantest fraction of the day at Lowood: the bit of bread, the draught of coffee swallowed at five o’clock had revived vitality, if it had not satisfied hunger: the long restraint of the day was slackened; the schoolroom felt warmer than in the morning—its fires being allowed to burn a little more brightly, to supply, in some measure, the place of candles, not yet introduced: the ruddy gloaming, the licensed uproar, the confusion of many voices gave one a welcome sense of liberty. On the evening of the day on which I had seen Miss Scatcherd flog her pupil, Burns, I wandered as usual among the forms and tables and laughing groups without a companion, yet not feeling lonely: when I passed the windows, I now and then lifted a blind, and looked out; it snowed fast, a drift was already forming against the lower panes; putting my ear close to the window, I could distinguish from the gleeful tumult within, the disconsolate moan of the wind outside. Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted the separation; that wind would then have saddened my heart; this obscure chaos would have disturbed my peace! as it was, I derived from both a strange excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to rise to clamour. Jumping over forms, and creeping under tables, I made my way to one of the fire-places; there, kneeling by the high wire fender, I found Burns, absorbed, silent, abstracted from all round her by the companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers. “Is it still ‘Rasselas’?” I asked, coming behind her. “Yes,” she said, “and I have just finished it.” And in five minutes more she shut it up. I was glad of this. “Now,” thought I, “I can perhaps get her to talk.” I sat down by her on the floor. “What is your name besides Burns?” “Helen.” “Do you come a long way from here?” “I come from a place farther north, quite on the borders of Scotland.” “Will you ever go back?” “I hope so; but nobody can be sure of the future.” “You must wish to leave Lowood?” “No! why should I? I was sent to Lowood to get an education; and it would be of no use going away until I have attained that object.” “But that teacher, Miss Scatcherd, is so cruel to you?” “Cruel? Not at all! She is severe: she dislikes my faults.” “And if I were in your place I should dislike her; I should resist her. If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her nose.” “Probably you would do nothing of the sort: but if you did, Mr. Brocklehurst would expel you from the school; that would be a great grief to your relations. It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil.” “But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged, and to be sent to stand in the middle of a room full of people; and you are such a great girl: I am far younger than you, and I could not bear it.” “Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you _cannot bear_ what it is your fate to be required to bear.” I heard her with wonder: I could not comprehend this doctrine of endurance; and still less could I understand or sympathise with the forbearance she expressed for her chastiser. Still I felt that Helen Burns considered things by a light invisible to my eyes. I suspected she might be right and I wrong; but I would not ponder the matter deeply; like Felix, I put it off to a more convenient season. “You say you have faults, Helen: what are they? To me you seem very good.” “Then learn from me, not to judge by appearances: I am, as Miss Scatcherd said, slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things in order; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot _bear_ to be subjected to systematic arrangements. This is all very provoking to Miss Scatcherd, who is naturally neat, punctual, and particular.” “And cross and cruel,” I added; but Helen Burns would not admit my addition: she kept silence. “Is Miss Temple as severe to you as Miss Scatcherd?” At the utterance of Miss Temple’s name, a soft smile flitted over her grave face. “Miss Temple is full of goodness; it pains her to be severe to any one, even the worst in the school: she sees my errors, and tells me of them gently; and, if I do anything worthy of praise, she gives me my meed liberally. One strong proof of my wretchedly defective nature is, that even her expostulations, so mild, so rational, have not influence to cure me of my faults; and even her praise, though I value it most highly, cannot stimulate me to continued care and foresight.” “That is curious,” said I, “it is so easy to be careful.” “For _you_ I have no doubt it is. I observed you in your class this morning, and saw you were closely attentive: your thoughts never seemed to wander while Miss Miller explained the lesson and questioned you. Now, mine continually rove away; when I should be listening to Miss Scatcherd, and collecting all she says with assiduity, often I lose the very sound of her voice; I fall into a sort of dream. Sometimes I think I am in Northumberland, and that the noises I hear round me are the bubbling of a little brook which runs through Deepden, near our house;—then, when it comes to my turn to reply, I have to be awakened; and having heard nothing of what was read for listening to the visionary brook, I have no answer ready.” “Yet how well you replied this afternoon.” “It was mere chance; the subject on which we had been reading had interested me. This afternoon, instead of dreaming of Deepden, I was wondering how a man who wished to do right could act so unjustly and unwisely as Charles the First sometimes did; and I thought what a pity it was that, with his integrity and conscientiousness, he could see no farther than the prerogatives of the crown. If he had but been able to look to a distance, and see how what they call the spirit of the age was tending! Still, I like Charles—I respect him—I pity him, poor murdered king! Yes, his enemies were the worst: they shed blood they had no right to shed. How dared they kill him!” Helen was talking to herself now: she had forgotten I could not very well understand her—that I was ignorant, or nearly so, of the subject she discussed. I recalled her to my level. “And when Miss Temple teaches you, do your thoughts wander then?” “No, certainly, not often; because Miss Temple has generally something to say which is newer than my own reflections; her language is singularly agreeable to me, and the information she communicates is often just what I wished to gain.” “Well, then, with Miss Temple you are good?” “Yes, in a passive way: I make no effort; I follow as inclination guides me. There is no merit in such goodness.” “A great deal: you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should—so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.” “You will change your mind, I hope, when you grow older: as yet you are but a little untaught girl.” “But I feel this, Helen; I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.” “Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine, but Christians and civilised nations disown it.” “How? I don’t understand.” “It is not violence that best overcomes hate—nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.” “What then?” “Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how He acts; make His word your rule, and His conduct your example.” “What does He say?” “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you.” “Then I should love Mrs. Reed, which I cannot do; I should bless her son John, which is impossible.” In her turn, Helen Burns asked me to explain, and I proceeded forthwith to pour out, in my own way, the tale of my sufferings and resentments. Bitter and truculent when excited, I spoke as I felt, without reserve or softening. Helen heard me patiently to the end: I expected she would then make a remark, but she said nothing. “Well,” I asked impatiently, “is not Mrs. Reed a hard-hearted, bad woman?” “She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because you see, she dislikes your cast of character, as Miss Scatcherd does mine; but how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you! What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain,—the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man—perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph! Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend? No; I cannot believe that: I hold another creed: which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention; but in which I delight, and to which I cling: for it extends hope to all: it makes Eternity a rest—a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last: with this creed revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I live in calm, looking to the end.” Helen’s head, always drooping, sank a little lower as she finished this sentence. I saw by her look she wished no longer to talk to me, but rather to converse with her own thoughts. She was not allowed much time for meditation: a monitor, a great rough girl, presently came up, exclaiming in a strong Cumberland accent— “Helen Burns, if you don’t go and put your drawer in order, and fold up your work this minute, I’ll tell Miss Scatcherd to come and look at it!” Helen sighed as her reverie fled, and getting up, obeyed the monitor without reply as without delay. ', 'My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks. The fear of failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my lot; though these were no trifles. During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows, and, after their melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented our stirring beyond the garden walls, except to go to church; but within these limits we had to pass an hour every day in the open air. Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold: we had no boots, the snow got into our shoes and melted there: our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet: I remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening, when my feet inflamed; and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw, and stiff toes into my shoes in the morning. Then the scanty supply of food was distressing: with the keen appetites of growing children, we had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on the younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion. Many a time I have shared between two claimants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at tea-time; and after relinquishing to a third half the contents of my mug of coffee, I have swallowed the remainder with an accompaniment of secret tears, forced from me by the exigency of hunger. Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season. We had to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron officiated. We set out cold, we arrived at church colder: during the morning service we became almost paralysed. It was too far to return to dinner, and an allowance of cold meat and bread, in the same penurious proportion observed in our ordinary meals, was served round between the services. At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed and hilly road, where the bitter winter wind, blowing over a range of snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the skin from our faces. I can remember Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly along our drooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered, gathered close about her, and encouraging us, by precept and example, to keep up our spirits, and march forward, as she said, “like stalwart soldiers.” The other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others. How we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when we got back! But, to the little ones at least, this was denied: each hearth in the schoolroom was immediately surrounded by a double row of great girls, and behind them the younger children crouched in groups, wrapping their starved arms in their pinafores. A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration of bread—a whole, instead of a half, slice—with the delicious addition of a thin scrape of butter: it was the hebdomadal treat to which we all looked forward from Sabbath to Sabbath. I generally contrived to reserve a moiety of this bounteous repast for myself; but the remainder I was invariably obliged to part with. The Sunday evening was spent in repeating, by heart, the Church Catechism, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St. Matthew; and in listening to a long sermon, read by Miss Miller, whose irrepressible yawns attested her weariness. A frequent interlude of these performances was the enactment of the part of Eutychus by some half-dozen of little girls, who, overpowered with sleep, would fall down, if not out of the third loft, yet off the fourth form, and be taken up half dead. The remedy was, to thrust them forward into the centre of the schoolroom, and oblige them to stand there till the sermon was finished. Sometimes their feet failed them, and they sank together in a heap; they were then propped up with the monitors’ high stools. I have not yet alluded to the visits of Mr. Brocklehurst; and indeed that gentleman was from home during the greater part of the first month after my arrival; perhaps prolonging his stay with his friend the archdeacon: his absence was a relief to me. I need not say that I had my own reasons for dreading his coming: but come he did at last. One afternoon (I had then been three weeks at Lowood), as I was sitting with a slate in my hand, puzzling over a sum in long division, my eyes, raised in abstraction to the window, caught sight of a figure just passing: I recognised almost instinctively that gaunt outline; and when, two minutes after, all the school, teachers included, rose _en masse_, it was not necessary for me to look up in order to ascertain whose entrance they thus greeted. A long stride measured the schoolroom, and presently beside Miss Temple, who herself had risen, stood the same black column which had frowned on me so ominously from the hearthrug of Gateshead. I now glanced sideways at this piece of architecture. Yes, I was right: it was Mr. Brocklehurst, buttoned up in a surtout, and looking longer, narrower, and more rigid than ever. I had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition; too well I remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Reed about my disposition, &c.; the promise pledged by Mr. Brocklehurst to apprise Miss Temple and the teachers of my vicious nature. All along I had been dreading the fulfilment of this promise,—I had been looking out daily for the “Coming Man,” whose information respecting my past life and conversation was to brand me as a bad child for ever: now there he was. He stood at Miss Temple’s side; he was speaking low in her ear: I did not doubt he was making disclosures of my villainy; and I watched her eye with painful anxiety, expecting every moment to see its dark orb turn on me a glance of repugnance and contempt. I listened too; and as I happened to be seated quite at the top of the room, I caught most of what he said: its import relieved me from immediate apprehension. “I suppose, Miss Temple, the thread I bought at Lowton will do; it struck me that it would be just of the quality for the calico chemises, and I sorted the needles to match. You may tell Miss Smith that I forgot to make a memorandum of the darning needles, but she shall have some papers sent in next week; and she is not, on any account, to give out more than one at a time to each pupil: if they have more, they are apt to be careless and lose them. And, O ma’am! I wish the woollen stockings were better looked to!—when I was here last, I went into the kitchen-garden and examined the clothes drying on the line; there was a quantity of black hose in a very bad state of repair: from the size of the holes in them I was sure they had not been well mended from time to time.” He paused. “Your directions shall be attended to, sir,” said Miss Temple. “And, ma’am,” he continued, “the laundress tells me some of the girls have two clean tuckers in the week: it is too much; the rules limit them to one.” “I think I can explain that circumstance, sir. Agnes and Catherine Johnstone were invited to take tea with some friends at Lowton last Thursday, and I gave them leave to put on clean tuckers for the occasion.” Mr. Brocklehurst nodded. “Well, for once it may pass; but please not to let the circumstance occur too often. And there is another thing which surprised me; I find, in settling accounts with the housekeeper, that a lunch, consisting of bread and cheese, has twice been served out to the girls during the past fortnight. How is this? I looked over the regulations, and I find no such meal as lunch mentioned. Who introduced this innovation? and by what authority?” “I must be responsible for the circumstance, sir,” replied Miss Temple: “the breakfast was so ill prepared that the pupils could not possibly eat it; and I dared not allow them to remain fasting till dinner-time.” “Madam, allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institution; it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude under the temporary privation. A brief address on those occasions would not be mistimed, wherein a judicious instructor would take the opportunity of referring to the sufferings of the primitive Christians; to the torments of martyrs; to the exhortations of our blessed Lord Himself, calling upon His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him; to His warnings that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; to His divine consolations, ‘If ye suffer hunger or thirst for My sake, happy are ye.’ Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!” Mr. Brocklehurst again paused—perhaps overcome by his feelings. Miss Temple had looked down when he first began to speak to her; but she now gazed straight before her, and her face, naturally pale as marble, appeared to be assuming also the coldness and fixity of that material; especially her mouth, closed as if it would have required a sculptor’s chisel to open it, and her brow settled gradually into petrified severity. Meantime, Mr. Brocklehurst, standing on the hearth with his hands behind his back, majestically surveyed the whole school. Suddenly his eye gave a blink, as if it had met something that either dazzled or shocked its pupil; turning, he said in more rapid accents than he had hitherto used— “Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what—_what_ is that girl with curled hair? Red hair, ma’am, curled—curled all over?” And extending his cane he pointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he did so. “It is Julia Severn,” replied Miss Temple, very quietly. “Julia Severn, ma’am! And why has she, or any other, curled hair? Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so openly—here in an evangelical, charitable establishment—as to wear her hair one mass of curls?” “Julia’s hair curls naturally,” returned Miss Temple, still more quietly. “Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature; I wish these girls to be the children of Grace: and why that abundance? I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl’s hair must be cut off entirely; I will send a barber to-morrow: and I see others who have far too much of the excrescence—that tall girl, tell her to turn round. Tell all the first form to rise up and direct their faces to the wall.” Miss Temple passed her handkerchief over her lips, as if to smooth away the involuntary smile that curled them; she gave the order, however, and when the first class could take in what was required of them, they obeyed. Leaning a little back on my bench, I could see the looks and grimaces with which they commented on this manoeuvre: it was a pity Mr. Brocklehurst could not see them too; he would perhaps have felt that, whatever he might do with the outside of the cup and platter, the inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined. He scrutinised the reverse of these living medals some five minutes, then pronounced sentence. These words fell like the knell of doom— “All those top-knots must be cut off.” Miss Temple seemed to remonstrate. “Madam,” he pursued, “I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world: my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have woven; these, I repeat, must be cut off; think of the time wasted, of—” Mr. Brocklehurst was here interrupted: three other visitors, ladies, now entered the room. They ought to have come a little sooner to have heard his lecture on dress, for they were splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs. The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled; the elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a false front of French curls. These ladies were deferentially received by Miss Temple, as Mrs. and the Misses Brocklehurst, and conducted to seats of honour at the top of the room. It seems they had come in the carriage with their reverend relative, and had been conducting a rummaging scrutiny of the room upstairs, while he transacted business with the housekeeper, questioned the laundress, and lectured the superintendent. They now proceeded to address divers remarks and reproofs to Miss Smith, who was charged with the care of the linen and the inspection of the dormitories: but I had no time to listen to what they said; other matters called off and enchanted my attention. Hitherto, while gathering up the discourse of Mr. Brocklehurst and Miss Temple, I had not, at the same time, neglected precautions to secure my personal safety; which I thought would be effected, if I could only elude observation. To this end, I had sat well back on the form, and while seeming to be busy with my sum, had held my slate in such a manner as to conceal my face: I might have escaped notice, had not my treacherous slate somehow happened to slip from my hand, and falling with an obtrusive crash, directly drawn every eye upon me; I knew it was all over now, and, as I stooped to pick up the two fragments of slate, I rallied my forces for the worst. It came. “A careless girl!” said Mr. Brocklehurst, and immediately after—“It is the new pupil, I perceive.” And before I could draw breath, “I must not forget I have a word to say respecting her.” Then aloud: how loud it seemed to me! “Let the child who broke her slate come forward!” Of my own accord I could not have stirred; I was paralysed: but the two great girls who sat on each side of me, set me on my legs and pushed me towards the dread judge, and then Miss Temple gently assisted me to his very feet, and I caught her whispered counsel— “Don’t be afraid, Jane, I saw it was an accident; you shall not be punished.” The kind whisper went to my heart like a dagger. “Another minute, and she will despise me for a hypocrite,” thought I; and an impulse of fury against Reed, Brocklehurst, and Co. bounded in my pulses at the conviction. I was no Helen Burns. “Fetch that stool,” said Mr. Brocklehurst, pointing to a very high one from which a monitor had just risen: it was brought. “Place the child upon it.” And I was placed there, by whom I don’t know: I was in no condition to note particulars; I was only aware that they had hoisted me up to the height of Mr. Brocklehurst’s nose, that he was within a yard of me, and that a spread of shot orange and purple silk pelisses and a cloud of silvery plumage extended and waved below me. Mr. Brocklehurst hemmed. “Ladies,” said he, turning to his family, “Miss Temple, teachers, and children, you all see this girl?” Of course they did; for I felt their eyes directed like burning-glasses against my scorched skin. “You see she is yet young; you observe she possesses the ordinary form of childhood; God has graciously given her the shape that He has given to all of us; no signal deformity points her out as a marked character. Who would think that the Evil One had already found a servant and agent in her? Yet such, I grieve to say, is the case.” A pause—in which I began to steady the palsy of my nerves, and to feel that the Rubicon was passed; and that the trial, no longer to be shirked, must be firmly sustained. “My dear children,” pursued the black marble clergyman, with pathos, “this is a sad, a melancholy occasion; for it becomes my duty to warn you, that this girl, who might be one of God’s own lambs, is a little castaway: not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper and an alien. You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her out from your converse. Teachers, you must watch her: keep your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinise her actions, punish her body to save her soul: if, indeed, such salvation be possible, for (my tongue falters while I tell it) this girl, this child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut—this girl is—a liar!” Now came a pause of ten minutes, during which I, by this time in perfect possession of my wits, observed all the female Brocklehursts produce their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics, while the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the two younger ones whispered, “How shocking!” Mr. Brocklehurst resumed. “This I learned from her benefactress; from the pious and charitable lady who adopted her in her orphan state, reared her as her own daughter, and whose kindness, whose generosity the unhappy girl repaid by an ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that at last her excellent patroness was obliged to separate her from her own young ones, fearful lest her vicious example should contaminate their purity: she has sent her here to be healed, even as the Jews of old sent their diseased to the troubled pool of Bethesda; and, teachers, superintendent, I beg of you not to allow the waters to stagnate round her.” With this sublime conclusion, Mr. Brocklehurst adjusted the top button of his surtout, muttered something to his family, who rose, bowed to Miss Temple, and then all the great people sailed in state from the room. Turning at the door, my judge said— “Let her stand half-an-hour longer on that stool, and let no one speak to her during the remainder of the day.” There was I, then, mounted aloft; I, who had said I could not bear the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room, was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. What my sensations were, no language can describe; but just as they all rose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me: in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new feeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit. I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, and took a firm stand on the stool. Helen Burns asked some slight question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and smiled at me as she again went by. What a smile! I remember it now, and I know that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage; it lit up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken grey eye, like a reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet at that moment Helen Burns wore on her arm “the untidy badge;” scarcely an hour ago I had heard her condemned by Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water on the morrow because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out. Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd’s can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb. ', 'Ere the half-hour ended, five o’clock struck; school was dismissed, and all were gone into the refectory to tea. I now ventured to descend: it was deep dusk; I retired into a corner and sat down on the floor. The spell by which I had been so far supported began to dissolve; reaction took place, and soon, so overwhelming was the grief that seized me, I sank prostrate with my face to the ground. Now I wept: Helen Burns was not here; nothing sustained me; left to myself I abandoned myself, and my tears watered the boards. I had meant to be so good, and to do so much at Lowood: to make so many friends, to earn respect and win affection. Already I had made visible progress: that very morning I had reached the head of my class; Miss Miller had praised me warmly; Miss Temple had smiled approbation; she had promised to teach me drawing, and to let me learn French, if I continued to make similar improvement two months longer: and then I was well received by my fellow-pupils; treated as an equal by those of my own age, and not molested by any; now, here I lay again crushed and trodden on; and could I ever rise more? “Never,” I thought; and ardently I wished to die. While sobbing out this wish in broken accents, some one approached: I started up—again Helen Burns was near me; the fading fires just showed her coming up the long, vacant room; she brought my coffee and bread. “Come, eat something,” she said; but I put both away from me, feeling as if a drop or a crumb would have choked me in my present condition. Helen regarded me, probably with surprise: I could not now abate my agitation, though I tried hard; I continued to weep aloud. She sat down on the ground near me, embraced her knees with her arms, and rested her head upon them; in that attitude she remained silent as an Indian. I was the first who spoke— “Helen, why do you stay with a girl whom everybody believes to be a liar?” “Everybody, Jane? Why, there are only eighty people who have heard you called so, and the world contains hundreds of millions.” “But what have I to do with millions? The eighty I know despise me.” “Jane, you are mistaken: probably not one in the school either despises or dislikes you: many, I am sure, pity you much.” “How can they pity me after what Mr. Brocklehurst has said?” “Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god: nor is he even a great and admired man: he is little liked here; he never took steps to make himself liked. Had he treated you as an especial favourite, you would have found enemies, declared or covert, all around you; as it is, the greater number would offer you sympathy if they dared. Teachers and pupils may look coldly on you for a day or two, but friendly feelings are concealed in their hearts; and if you persevere in doing well, these feelings will ere long appear so much the more evidently for their temporary suppression. Besides, Jane”—she paused. “Well, Helen?” said I, putting my hand into hers: she chafed my fingers gently to warm them, and went on— “If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.” “No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don’t love me I would rather die than live—I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest—” “Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement; the sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence (if innocent we be: as I know you are of this charge which Mr. Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at second-hand from Mrs. Reed; for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness—to glory?” I was silent; Helen had calmed me; but in the tranquillity she imparted there was an alloy of inexpressible sadness. I felt the impression of woe as she spoke, but I could not tell whence it came; and when, having done speaking, she breathed a little fast and coughed a short cough, I momentarily forgot my own sorrows to yield to a vague concern for her. Resting my head on Helen’s shoulder, I put my arms round her waist; she drew me to her, and we reposed in silence. We had not sat long thus, when another person came in. Some heavy clouds, swept from the sky by a rising wind, had left the moon bare; and her light, streaming in through a window near, shone full both on us and on the approaching figure, which we at once recognised as Miss Temple. “I came on purpose to find you, Jane Eyre,” said she; “I want you in my room; and as Helen Burns is with you, she may come too.” We went; following the superintendent’s guidance, we had to thread some intricate passages, and mount a staircase before we reached her apartment; it contained a good fire, and looked cheerful. Miss Temple told Helen Burns to be seated in a low arm-chair on one side of the hearth, and herself taking another, she called me to her side. “Is it all over?” she asked, looking down at my face. “Have you cried your grief away?” “I am afraid I never shall do that.” “Why?” “Because I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma’am, and everybody else, will now think me wicked.” “We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. Continue to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us.” “Shall I, Miss Temple?” “You will,” said she, passing her arm round me. “And now tell me who is the lady whom Mr. Brocklehurst called your benefactress?” “Mrs. Reed, my uncle’s wife. My uncle is dead, and he left me to her care.” “Did she not, then, adopt you of her own accord?” “No, ma’am; she was sorry to have to do it: but my uncle, as I have often heard the servants say, got her to promise before he died that she would always keep me.” “Well now, Jane, you know, or at least I will tell you, that when a criminal is accused, he is always allowed to speak in his own defence. You have been charged with falsehood; defend yourself to me as well as you can. Say whatever your memory suggests is true; but add nothing and exaggerate nothing.” I resolved, in the depth of my heart, that I would be most moderate—most correct; and, having reflected a few minutes in order to arrange coherently what I had to say, I told her all the story of my sad childhood. Exhausted by emotion, my language was more subdued than it generally was when it developed that sad theme; and mindful of Helen’s warnings against the indulgence of resentment, I infused into the narrative far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary. Thus restrained and simplified, it sounded more credible: I felt as I went on that Miss Temple fully believed me. In the course of the tale I had mentioned Mr. Lloyd as having come to see me after the fit: for I never forgot the, to me, frightful episode of the red-room: in detailing which, my excitement was sure, in some degree, to break bounds; for nothing could soften in my recollection the spasm of agony which clutched my heart when Mrs. Reed spurned my wild supplication for pardon, and locked me a second time in the dark and haunted chamber. I had finished: Miss Temple regarded me a few minutes in silence; she then said— “I know something of Mr. Lloyd; I shall write to him; if his reply agrees with your statement, you shall be publicly cleared from every imputation; to me, Jane, you are clear now.” She kissed me, and still keeping me at her side (where I was well contented to stand, for I derived a child’s pleasure from the contemplation of her face, her dress, her one or two ornaments, her white forehead, her clustered and shining curls, and beaming dark eyes), she proceeded to address Helen Burns. “How are you to-night, Helen? Have you coughed much to-day?” “Not quite so much, I think, ma’am.” “And the pain in your chest?” “It is a little better.” Miss Temple got up, took her hand and examined her pulse; then she returned to her own seat: as she resumed it, I heard her sigh low. She was pensive a few minutes, then rousing herself, she said cheerfully— “But you two are my visitors to-night; I must treat you as such.” She rang her bell. “Barbara,” she said to the servant who answered it, “I have not yet had tea; bring the tray and place cups for these two young ladies.” And a tray was soon brought. How pretty, to my eyes, did the china cups and bright teapot look, placed on the little round table near the fire! How fragrant was the steam of the beverage, and the scent of the toast! of which, however, I, to my dismay (for I was beginning to be hungry) discerned only a very small portion: Miss Temple discerned it too. “Barbara,” said she, “can you not bring a little more bread and butter? There is not enough for three.” Barbara went out: she returned soon— “Madam, Mrs. Harden says she has sent up the usual quantity.” Mrs. Harden, be it observed, was the housekeeper: a woman after Mr. Brocklehurst’s own heart, made up of equal parts of whalebone and iron. “Oh, very well!” returned Miss Temple; “we must make it do, Barbara, I suppose.” And as the girl withdrew she added, smiling, “Fortunately, I have it in my power to supply deficiencies for this once.” Having invited Helen and me to approach the table, and placed before each of us a cup of tea with one delicious but thin morsel of toast, she got up, unlocked a drawer, and taking from it a parcel wrapped in paper, disclosed presently to our eyes a good-sized seed-cake. “I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you,” said she, “but as there is so little toast, you must have it now,” and she proceeded to cut slices with a generous hand. We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia; and not the least delight of the entertainment was the smile of gratification with which our hostess regarded us, as we satisfied our famished appetites on the delicate fare she liberally supplied. Tea over and the tray removed, she again summoned us to the fire; we sat one on each side of her, and now a conversation followed between her and Helen, which it was indeed a privilege to be admitted to hear. Miss Temple had always something of serenity in her air, of state in her mien, of refined propriety in her language, which precluded deviation into the ardent, the excited, the eager: something which chastened the pleasure of those who looked on her and listened to her, by a controlling sense of awe; and such was my feeling now: but as to Helen Burns, I was struck with wonder. The refreshing meal, the brilliant fire, the presence and kindness of her beloved instructress, or, perhaps, more than all these, something in her own unique mind, had roused her powers within her. They woke, they kindled: first, they glowed in the bright tint of her cheek, which till this hour I had never seen but pale and bloodless; then they shone in the liquid lustre of her eyes, which had suddenly acquired a beauty more singular than that of Miss Temple’s—a beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance. Then her soul sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source I cannot tell. Has a girl of fourteen a heart large enough, vigorous enough, to hold the swelling spring of pure, full, fervid eloquence? Such was the characteristic of Helen’s discourse on that, to me, memorable evening; her spirit seemed hastening to live within a very brief span as much as many live during a protracted existence. They conversed of things I had never heard of; of nations and times past; of countries far away; of secrets of nature discovered or guessed at: they spoke of books: how many they had read! What stores of knowledge they possessed! Then they seemed so familiar with French names and French authors: but my amazement reached its climax when Miss Temple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall the Latin her father had taught her, and taking a book from a shelf, bade her read and construe a page of Virgil; and Helen obeyed, my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding line. She had scarcely finished ere the bell announced bedtime! no delay could be admitted; Miss Temple embraced us both, saying, as she drew us to her heart— “God bless you, my children!” Helen she held a little longer than me: she let her go more reluctantly; it was Helen her eye followed to the door; it was for her she a second time breathed a sad sigh; for her she wiped a tear from her cheek. On reaching the bedroom, we heard the voice of Miss Scatcherd: she was examining drawers; she had just pulled out Helen Burns’s, and when we entered Helen was greeted with a sharp reprimand, and told that to-morrow she should have half-a-dozen of untidily folded articles pinned to her shoulder. “My things were indeed in shameful disorder,” murmured Helen to me, in a low voice: “I intended to have arranged them, but I forgot.” Next morning, Miss Scatcherd wrote in conspicuous characters on a piece of pasteboard the word “Slattern,” and bound it like a phylactery round Helen’s large, mild, intelligent, and benign-looking forehead. She wore it till evening, patient, unresentful, regarding it as a deserved punishment. The moment Miss Scatcherd withdrew after afternoon school, I ran to Helen, tore it off, and thrust it into the fire: the fury of which she was incapable had been burning in my soul all day, and tears, hot and large, had continually been scalding my cheek; for the spectacle of her sad resignation gave me an intolerable pain at the heart. About a week subsequently to the incidents above narrated, Miss Temple, who had written to Mr. Lloyd, received his answer: it appeared that what he said went to corroborate my account. Miss Temple, having assembled the whole school, announced that inquiry had been made into the charges alleged against Jane Eyre, and that she was most happy to be able to pronounce her completely cleared from every imputation. The teachers then shook hands with me and kissed me, and a murmur of pleasure ran through the ranks of my companions. Thus relieved of a grievous load, I from that hour set to work afresh, resolved to pioneer my way through every difficulty: I toiled hard, and my success was proportionate to my efforts; my memory, not naturally tenacious, improved with practice; exercise sharpened my wits; in a few weeks I was promoted to a higher class; in less than two months I was allowed to commence French and drawing. I learned the first two tenses of the verb _Etre_, and sketched my first cottage (whose walls, by-the-bye, outrivalled in slope those of the leaning tower of Pisa), on the same day. That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings: I feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings, which I saw in the dark; all the work of my own hands: freely pencilled houses and trees, picturesque rocks and ruins, Cuyp-like groups of cattle, sweet paintings of butterflies hovering over unblown roses, of birds picking at ripe cherries, of wren’s nests enclosing pearl-like eggs, wreathed about with young ivy sprays. I examined, too, in thought, the possibility of my ever being able to translate currently a certain little French story which Madame Pierrot had that day shown me; nor was that problem solved to my satisfaction ere I fell sweetly asleep. Well has Solomon said—“Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” I would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for Gateshead and its daily luxuries. ', 'But the privations, or rather the hardships, of Lowood lessened. Spring drew on: she was indeed already come; the frosts of winter had ceased; its snows were melted, its cutting winds ameliorated. My wretched feet, flayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of January, began to heal and subside under the gentler breathings of April; the nights and mornings no longer by their Canadian temperature froze the very blood in our veins; we could now endure the play-hour passed in the garden: sometimes on a sunny day it began even to be pleasant and genial, and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps. Flowers peeped out amongst the leaves; snow-drops, crocuses, purple auriculas, and golden-eyed pansies. On Thursday afternoons (half-holidays) we now took walks, and found still sweeter flowers opening by the wayside, under the hedges. I discovered, too, that a great pleasure, an enjoyment which the horizon only bounded, lay all outside the high and spike-guarded walls of our garden: this pleasure consisted in prospect of noble summits girdling a great hill-hollow, rich in verdure and shadow; in a bright beck, full of dark stones and sparkling eddies. How different had this scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky of winter, stiffened in frost, shrouded with snow!—when mists as chill as death wandered to the impulse of east winds along those purple peaks, and rolled down “ing” and holm till they blended with the frozen fog of the beck! That beck itself was then a torrent, turbid and curbless: it tore asunder the wood, and sent a raving sound through the air, often thickened with wild rain or whirling sleet; and for the forest on its banks, _that_ showed only ranks of skeletons. April advanced to May: a bright serene May it was; days of blue sky, placid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled up its duration. And now vegetation matured with vigour; Lowood shook loose its tresses; it became all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre. All this I enjoyed often and fully, free, unwatched, and almost alone: for this unwonted liberty and pleasure there was a cause, to which it now becomes my task to advert. Have I not described a pleasant site for a dwelling, when I speak of it as bosomed in hill and wood, and rising from the verge of a stream? Assuredly, pleasant enough: but whether healthy or not is another question. That forest-dell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of fog and fog-bred pestilence; which, quickening with the quickening spring, crept into the Orphan Asylum, breathed typhus through its crowded schoolroom and dormitory, and, ere May arrived, transformed the seminary into an hospital. Semi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the pupils to receive infection: forty-five out of the eighty girls lay ill at one time. Classes were broken up, rules relaxed. The few who continued well were allowed almost unlimited license; because the medical attendant insisted on the necessity of frequent exercise to keep them in health: and had it been otherwise, no one had leisure to watch or restrain them. Miss Temple’s whole attention was absorbed by the patients: she lived in the sick-room, never quitting it except to snatch a few hours’ rest at night. The teachers were fully occupied with packing up and making other necessary preparations for the departure of those girls who were fortunate enough to have friends and relations able and willing to remove them from the seat of contagion. Many, already smitten, went home only to die: some died at the school, and were buried quietly and quickly, the nature of the malady forbidding delay. While disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood, and death its frequent visitor; while there was gloom and fear within its walls; while its rooms and passages steamed with hospital smells, the drug and the pastille striving vainly to overcome the effluvia of mortality, that bright May shone unclouded over the bold hills and beautiful woodland out of doors. Its garden, too, glowed with flowers: hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees, lilies had opened, tulips and roses were in bloom; the borders of the little beds were gay with pink thrift and crimson double daisies; the sweetbriars gave out, morning and evening, their scent of spice and apples; and these fragrant treasures were all useless for most of the inmates of Lowood, except to furnish now and then a handful of herbs and blossoms to put in a coffin. But I, and the rest who continued well, enjoyed fully the beauties of the scene and season; they let us ramble in the wood, like gipsies, from morning till night; we did what we liked, went where we liked: we lived better too. Mr. Brocklehurst and his family never came near Lowood now: household matters were not scrutinised into; the cross housekeeper was gone, driven away by the fear of infection; her successor, who had been matron at the Lowton Dispensary, unused to the ways of her new abode, provided with comparative liberality. Besides, there were fewer to feed; the sick could eat little; our breakfast-basins were better filled; when there was no time to prepare a regular dinner, which often happened, she would give us a large piece of cold pie, or a thick slice of bread and cheese, and this we carried away with us to the wood, where we each chose the spot we liked best, and dined sumptuously. My favourite seat was a smooth and broad stone, rising white and dry from the very middle of the beck, and only to be got at by wading through the water; a feat I accomplished barefoot. The stone was just broad enough to accommodate, comfortably, another girl and me, at that time my chosen comrade—one Mary Ann Wilson; a shrewd, observant personage, whose society I took pleasure in, partly because she was witty and original, and partly because she had a manner which set me at my ease. Some years older than I, she knew more of the world, and could tell me many things I liked to hear: with her my curiosity found gratification: to my faults also she gave ample indulgence, never imposing curb or rein on anything I said. She had a turn for narrative, I for analysis; she liked to inform, I to question; so we got on swimmingly together, deriving much entertainment, if not much improvement, from our mutual intercourse. And where, meantime, was Helen Burns? Why did I not spend these sweet days of liberty with her? Had I forgotten her? or was I so worthless as to have grown tired of her pure society? Surely the Mary Ann Wilson I have mentioned was inferior to my first acquaintance: she could only tell me amusing stories, and reciprocate any racy and pungent gossip I chose to indulge in; while, if I have spoken truth of Helen, she was qualified to give those who enjoyed the privilege of her converse a taste of far higher things. True, reader; and I knew and felt this: and though I am a defective being, with many faults and few redeeming points, yet I never tired of Helen Burns; nor ever ceased to cherish for her a sentiment of attachment, as strong, tender, and respectful as any that ever animated my heart. How could it be otherwise, when Helen, at all times and under all circumstances, evinced for me a quiet and faithful friendship, which ill-humour never soured, nor irritation never troubled? But Helen was ill at present: for some weeks she had been removed from my sight to I knew not what room upstairs. She was not, I was told, in the hospital portion of the house with the fever patients; for her complaint was consumption, not typhus: and by consumption I, in my ignorance, understood something mild, which time and care would be sure to alleviate. I was confirmed in this idea by the fact of her once or twice coming downstairs on very warm sunny afternoons, and being taken by Miss Temple into the garden; but, on these occasions, I was not allowed to go and speak to her; I only saw her from the schoolroom window, and then not distinctly; for she was much wrapped up, and sat at a distance under the verandah. One evening, in the beginning of June, I had stayed out very late with Mary Ann in the wood; we had, as usual, separated ourselves from the others, and had wandered far; so far that we lost our way, and had to ask it at a lonely cottage, where a man and woman lived, who looked after a herd of half-wild swine that fed on the mast in the wood. When we got back, it was after moonrise: a pony, which we knew to be the surgeon’s, was standing at the garden door. Mary Ann remarked that she supposed some one must be very ill, as Mr. Bates had been sent for at that time of the evening. She went into the house; I stayed behind a few minutes to plant in my garden a handful of roots I had dug up in the forest, and which I feared would wither if I left them till the morning. This done, I lingered yet a little longer: the flowers smelt so sweet as the dew fell; it was such a pleasant evening, so serene, so warm; the still glowing west promised so fairly another fine day on the morrow; the moon rose with such majesty in the grave east. I was noting these things and enjoying them as a child might, when it entered my mind as it had never done before:— “How sad to be lying now on a sick bed, and to be in danger of dying! This world is pleasant—it would be dreary to be called from it, and to have to go who knows where?” And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell; and for the first time it recoiled, baffled; and for the first time glancing behind, on each side, and before it, it saw all round an unfathomed gulf: it felt the one point where it stood—the present; all the rest was formless cloud and vacant depth; and it shuddered at the thought of tottering, and plunging amid that chaos. While pondering this new idea, I heard the front door open; Mr. Bates came out, and with him was a nurse. After she had seen him mount his horse and depart, she was about to close the door, but I ran up to her. “How is Helen Burns?” “Very poorly,” was the answer. “Is it her Mr. Bates has been to see?” “Yes.” “And what does he say about her?” “He says she’ll not be here long.” This phrase, uttered in my hearing yesterday, would have only conveyed the notion that she was about to be removed to Northumberland, to her own home. I should not have suspected that it meant she was dying; but I knew instantly now! It opened clear on my comprehension that Helen Burns was numbering her last days in this world, and that she was going to be taken to the region of spirits, if such region there were. I experienced a shock of horror, then a strong thrill of grief, then a desire—a necessity to see her; and I asked in what room she lay. “She is in Miss Temple’s room,” said the nurse. “May I go up and speak to her?” “Oh no, child! It is not likely; and now it is time for you to come in; you’ll catch the fever if you stop out when the dew is falling.” The nurse closed the front door; I went in by the side entrance which led to the schoolroom: I was just in time; it was nine o’clock, and Miss Miller was calling the pupils to go to bed. It might be two hours later, probably near eleven, when I—not having been able to fall asleep, and deeming, from the perfect silence of the dormitory, that my companions were all wrapt in profound repose—rose softly, put on my frock over my night-dress, and, without shoes, crept from the apartment, and set off in quest of Miss Temple’s room. It was quite at the other end of the house; but I knew my way; and the light of the unclouded summer moon, entering here and there at passage windows, enabled me to find it without difficulty. An odour of camphor and burnt vinegar warned me when I came near the fever room: and I passed its door quickly, fearful lest the nurse who sat up all night should hear me. I dreaded being discovered and sent back; for I _must_ see Helen,—I must embrace her before she died,—I must give her one last kiss, exchange with her one last word. Having descended a staircase, traversed a portion of the house below, and succeeded in opening and shutting, without noise, two doors, I reached another flight of steps; these I mounted, and then just opposite to me was Miss Temple’s room. A light shone through the keyhole and from under the door; a profound stillness pervaded the vicinity. Coming near, I found the door slightly ajar; probably to admit some fresh air into the close abode of sickness. Indisposed to hesitate, and full of impatient impulses—soul and senses quivering with keen throes—I put it back and looked in. My eye sought Helen, and feared to find death. Close by Miss Temple’s bed, and half covered with its white curtains, there stood a little crib. I saw the outline of a form under the clothes, but the face was hid by the hangings: the nurse I had spoken to in the garden sat in an easy-chair asleep; an unsnuffed candle burnt dimly on the table. Miss Temple was not to be seen: I knew afterwards that she had been called to a delirious patient in the fever-room. I advanced; then paused by the crib side: my hand was on the curtain, but I preferred speaking before I withdrew it. I still recoiled at the dread of seeing a corpse. “Helen!” I whispered softly, “are you awake?” She stirred herself, put back the curtain, and I saw her face, pale, wasted, but quite composed: she looked so little changed that my fear was instantly dissipated. “Can it be you, Jane?” she asked, in her own gentle voice. “Oh!” I thought, “she is not going to die; they are mistaken: she could not speak and look so calmly if she were.” I got on to her crib and kissed her: her forehead was cold, and her cheek both cold and thin, and so were her hand and wrist; but she smiled as of old. “Why are you come here, Jane? It is past eleven o’clock: I heard it strike some minutes since.” “I came to see you, Helen: I heard you were very ill, and I could not sleep till I had spoken to you.” “You came to bid me good-bye, then: you are just in time probably.” “Are you going somewhere, Helen? Are you going home?” “Yes; to my long home—my last home.” “No, no, Helen!” I stopped, distressed. While I tried to devour my tears, a fit of coughing seized Helen; it did not, however, wake the nurse; when it was over, she lay some minutes exhausted; then she whispered— “Jane, your little feet are bare; lie down and cover yourself with my quilt.” I did so: she put her arm over me, and I nestled close to her. After a long silence, she resumed, still whispering— “I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me much: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss me. By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.” “But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?” “I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.” “Where is God? What is God?” “My Maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created. I rely implicitly on His power, and confide wholly in His goodness: I count the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to Him, reveal Him to me.” “You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as heaven, and that our souls can get to it when we die?” “I am sure there is a future state; I believe God is good; I can resign my immortal part to Him without any misgiving. God is my father; God is my friend: I love Him; I believe He loves me.” “And shall I see you again, Helen, when I die?” “You will come to the same region of happiness: be received by the same mighty, universal Parent, no doubt, dear Jane.” Again I questioned, but this time only in thought. “Where is that region? Does it exist?” And I clasped my arms closer round Helen; she seemed dearer to me than ever; I felt as if I could not let her go; I lay with my face hidden on her neck. Presently she said, in the sweetest tone— “How comfortable I am! That last fit of coughing has tired me a little; I feel as if I could sleep: but don’t leave me, Jane; I like to have you near me.” “I’ll stay with you, _dear_ Helen: no one shall take me away.” “Are you warm, darling?” “Yes.” “Good-night, Jane.” “Good-night, Helen.” She kissed me, and I her, and we both soon slumbered. When I awoke it was day: an unusual movement roused me; I looked up; I was in somebody’s arms; the nurse held me; she was carrying me through the passage back to the dormitory. I was not reprimanded for leaving my bed; people had something else to think about; no explanation was afforded then to my many questions; but a day or two afterwards I learned that Miss Temple, on returning to her own room at dawn, had found me laid in the little crib; my face against Helen Burns’s shoulder, my arms round her neck. I was asleep, and Helen was—dead. Her grave is in Brocklebridge churchyard: for fifteen years after her death it was only covered by a grassy mound; but now a grey marble tablet marks the spot, inscribed with her name, and the word “Resurgam.” ', 'Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant existence: to the first ten years of my life I have given almost as many chapters. But this is not to be a regular autobiography: I am only bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some degree of interest; therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost in silence: a few lines only are necessary to keep up the links of connection. When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation at Lowood, it gradually disappeared from thence; but not till its virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on the school. Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and by degrees various facts came out which excited public indignation in a high degree. The unhealthy nature of the site; the quantity and quality of the children’s food; the brackish, fetid water used in its preparation; the pupils’ wretched clothing and accommodations—all these things were discovered, and the discovery produced a result mortifying to Mr. Brocklehurst, but beneficial to the institution. Several wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed largely for the erection of a more convenient building in a better situation; new regulations were made; improvements in diet and clothing introduced; the funds of the school were intrusted to the management of a committee. Mr. Brocklehurst, who, from his wealth and family connections, could not be overlooked, still retained the post of treasurer; but he was aided in the discharge of his duties by gentlemen of rather more enlarged and sympathising minds: his office of inspector, too, was shared by those who knew how to combine reason with strictness, comfort with economy, compassion with uprightness. The school, thus improved, became in time a truly useful and noble institution. I remained an inmate of its walls, after its regeneration, for eight years: six as pupil, and two as teacher; and in both capacities I bear my testimony to its value and importance. During these eight years my life was uniform: but not unhappy, because it was not inactive. I had the means of an excellent education placed within my reach; a fondness for some of my studies, and a desire to excel in all, together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers, especially such as I loved, urged me on: I availed myself fully of the advantages offered me. In time I rose to be the first girl of the first class; then I was invested with the office of teacher; which I discharged with zeal for two years: but at the end of that time I altered. Miss Temple, through all changes, had thus far continued superintendent of the seminary: to her instruction I owed the best part of my acquirements; her friendship and society had been my continual solace; she had stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and, latterly, companion. At this period she married, removed with her husband (a clergyman, an excellent man, almost worthy of such a wife) to a distant county, and consequently was lost to me. From the day she left I was no longer the same: with her was gone every settled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in some degree a home to me. I had imbibed from her something of her nature and much of her habits: more harmonious thoughts: what seemed better regulated feelings had become the inmates of my mind. I had given in allegiance to duty and order; I was quiet; I believed I was content: to the eyes of others, usually even to my own, I appeared a disciplined and subdued character. But destiny, in the shape of the Rev. Mr. Nasmyth, came between me and Miss Temple: I saw her in her travelling dress step into a post-chaise, shortly after the marriage ceremony; I watched the chaise mount the hill and disappear beyond its brow; and then retired to my own room, and there spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday granted in honour of the occasion. I walked about the chamber most of the time. I imagined myself only to be regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it; but when my reflections were concluded, and I looked up and found that the afternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned on me, namely, that in the interval I had undergone a transforming process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple—or rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity—and that now I was left in my natural element, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquillity was no more. My world had for some years been in Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils. I went to my window, opened it, and looked out. There were the two wings of the building; there was the garden; there were the skirts of Lowood; there was the hilly horizon. My eye passed all other objects to rest on those most remote, the blue peaks; it was those I longed to surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed prison-ground, exile limits. I traced the white road winding round the base of one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between two; how I longed to follow it farther! I recalled the time when I had travelled that very road in a coach; I remembered descending that hill at twilight; an age seemed to have elapsed since the day which brought me first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since. My vacations had all been spent at school: Mrs. Reed had never sent for me to Gateshead; neither she nor any of her family had ever been to visit me. I had had no communication by letter or message with the outer world: school-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies—such was what I knew of existence. And now I felt that it was not enough; I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space: “Then,” I cried, half desperate, “grant me at least a new servitude!” Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs. I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till bedtime: even then a teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me from the subject to which I longed to recur, by a prolonged effusion of small talk. How I wished sleep would silence her. It seemed as if, could I but go back to the idea which had last entered my mind as I stood at the window, some inventive suggestion would rise for my relief. Miss Gryce snored at last; she was a heavy Welshwoman, and till now her habitual nasal strains had never been regarded by me in any other light than as a nuisance; to-night I hailed the first deep notes with satisfaction; I was debarrassed of interruption; my half-effaced thought instantly revived. “A new servitude! There is something in that,” I soliloquised (mentally, be it understood; I did not talk aloud). “I know there is, because it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words as Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but no more than sounds for me; and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere waste of time to listen to them. But Servitude! That must be matter of fact. Any one may serve: I have served here eight years; now all I want is to serve elsewhere. Can I not get so much of my own will? Is not the thing feasible? Yes—yes—the end is not so difficult; if I had only a brain active enough to ferret out the means of attaining it.” I sat up in bed by way of arousing this said brain: it was a chilly night; I covered my shoulders with a shawl, and then I proceeded _to think_ again with all my might. “What do I want? A new place, in a new house, amongst new faces, under new circumstances: I want this because it is of no use wanting anything better. How do people do to get a new place? They apply to friends, I suppose: I have no friends. There are many others who have no friends, who must look about for themselves and be their own helpers; and what is their resource?” I could not tell: nothing answered me; I then ordered my brain to find a response, and quickly. It worked and worked faster: I felt the pulses throb in my head and temples; but for nearly an hour it worked in chaos; and no result came of its efforts. Feverish with vain labour, I got up and took a turn in the room; undrew the curtain, noted a star or two, shivered with cold, and again crept to bed. A kind fairy, in my absence, had surely dropped the required suggestion on my pillow; for as I lay down, it came quietly and naturally to my mind:—“Those who want situations advertise; you must advertise in the _——shire Herald_.” “How? I know nothing about advertising.” Replies rose smooth and prompt now:— “You must enclose the advertisement and the money to pay for it under a cover directed to the editor of the _Herald_; you must put it, the first opportunity you have, into the post at Lowton; answers must be addressed to J.E., at the post-office there; you can go and inquire in about a week after you send your letter, if any are come, and act accordingly.” This scheme I went over twice, thrice; it was then digested in my mind; I had it in a clear practical form: I felt satisfied, and fell asleep. With earliest day, I was up: I had my advertisement written, enclosed, and directed before the bell rang to rouse the school; it ran thus:— “A young lady accustomed to tuition” (had I not been a teacher two years?) “is desirous of meeting with a situation in a private family where the children are under fourteen” (I thought that as I was barely eighteen, it would not do to undertake the guidance of pupils nearer my own age). “She is qualified to teach the usual branches of a good English education, together with French, Drawing, and Music” (in those days, reader, this now narrow catalogue of accomplishments, would have been held tolerably comprehensive). “Address, J.E., Post-office, Lowton, ——shire.” This document remained locked in my drawer all day: after tea, I asked leave of the new superintendent to go to Lowton, in order to perform some small commissions for myself and one or two of my fellow-teachers; permission was readily granted; I went. It was a walk of two miles, and the evening was wet, but the days were still long; I visited a shop or two, slipped the letter into the post-office, and came back through heavy rain, with streaming garments, but with a relieved heart. The succeeding week seemed long: it came to an end at last, however, like all sublunary things, and once more, towards the close of a pleasant autumn day, I found myself afoot on the road to Lowton. A picturesque track it was, by the way; lying along the side of the beck and through the sweetest curves of the dale: but that day I thought more of the letters, that might or might not be awaiting me at the little burgh whither I was bound, than of the charms of lea and water. My ostensible errand on this occasion was to get measured for a pair of shoes; so I discharged that business first, and when it was done, I stepped across the clean and quiet little street from the shoemaker’s to the post-office: it was kept by an old dame, who wore horn spectacles on her nose, and black mittens on her hands. “Are there any letters for J.E.?” I asked. She peered at me over her spectacles, and then she opened a drawer and fumbled among its contents for a long time, so long that my hopes began to falter. At last, having held a document before her glasses for nearly five minutes, she presented it across the counter, accompanying the act by another inquisitive and mistrustful glance—it was for J.E. “Is there only one?” I demanded. “There are no more,” said she; and I put it in my pocket and turned my face homeward: I could not open it then; rules obliged me to be back by eight, and it was already half-past seven. Various duties awaited me on my arrival: I had to sit with the girls during their hour of study; then it was my turn to read prayers; to see them to bed: afterwards I supped with the other teachers. Even when we finally retired for the night, the inevitable Miss Gryce was still my companion: we had only a short end of candle in our candlestick, and I dreaded lest she should talk till it was all burnt out; fortunately, however, the heavy supper she had eaten produced a soporific effect: she was already snoring before I had finished undressing. There still remained an inch of candle: I now took out my letter; the seal was an initial F.; I broke it; the contents were brief. “If J.E., who advertised in the _——shire Herald_ of last Thursday, possesses the acquirements mentioned, and if she is in a position to give satisfactory references as to character and competency, a situation can be offered her where there is but one pupil, a little girl, under ten years of age; and where the salary is thirty pounds per annum. J.E. is requested to send references, name, address, and all particulars to the direction:— “Mrs. Fairfax, Thornfield, near Millcote, ——shire.” I examined the document long: the writing was old-fashioned and rather uncertain, like that of an elderly lady. This circumstance was satisfactory: a private fear had haunted me, that in thus acting for myself, and by my own guidance, I ran the risk of getting into some scrape; and, above all things, I wished the result of my endeavours to be respectable, proper, _en règle_. I now felt that an elderly lady was no bad ingredient in the business I had on hand. Mrs. Fairfax! I saw her in a black gown and widow’s cap; frigid, perhaps, but not uncivil: a model of elderly English respectability. Thornfield! that, doubtless, was the name of her house: a neat orderly spot, I was sure; though I failed in my efforts to conceive a correct plan of the premises. Millcote, ——shire; I brushed up my recollections of the map of England; yes, I saw it; both the shire and the town. ——shire was seventy miles nearer London than the remote county where I now resided: that was a recommendation to me. I longed to go where there was life and movement: Millcote was a large manufacturing town on the banks of the A——: a busy place enough, doubtless: so much the better; it would be a complete change at least. Not that my fancy was much captivated by the idea of long chimneys and clouds of smoke—“but,” I argued, “Thornfield will, probably, be a good way from the town.” Here the socket of the candle dropped, and the wick went out. Next day new steps were to be taken; my plans could no longer be confined to my own breast; I must impart them in order to achieve their success. Having sought and obtained an audience of the superintendent during the noontide recreation, I told her I had a prospect of getting a new situation where the salary would be double what I now received (for at Lowood I only got £15 per annum); and requested she would break the matter for me to Mr. Brocklehurst, or some of the committee, and ascertain whether they would permit me to mention them as references. She obligingly consented to act as mediatrix in the matter. The next day she laid the affair before Mr. Brocklehurst, who said that Mrs. Reed must be written to, as she was my natural guardian. A note was accordingly addressed to that lady, who returned for answer, that “I might do as I pleased: she had long relinquished all interference in my affairs.” This note went the round of the committee, and at last, after what appeared to me most tedious delay, formal leave was given me to better my condition if I could; and an assurance added, that as I had always conducted myself well, both as teacher and pupil, at Lowood, a testimonial of character and capacity, signed by the inspectors of that institution, should forthwith be furnished me. This testimonial I accordingly received in about a month, forwarded a copy of it to Mrs. Fairfax, and got that lady’s reply, stating that she was satisfied, and fixing that day fortnight as the period for my assuming the post of governess in her house. I now busied myself in preparations: the fortnight passed rapidly. I had not a very large wardrobe, though it was adequate to my wants; and the last day sufficed to pack my trunk,—the same I had brought with me eight years ago from Gateshead. The box was corded, the card nailed on. In half-an-hour the carrier was to call for it to take it to Lowton, whither I myself was to repair at an early hour the next morning to meet the coach. I had brushed my black stuff travelling-dress, prepared my bonnet, gloves, and muff; sought in all my drawers to see that no article was left behind; and now having nothing more to do, I sat down and tried to rest. I could not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an instant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing to-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished. “Miss,” said a servant who met me in the lobby, where I was wandering like a troubled spirit, “a person below wishes to see you.” “The carrier, no doubt,” I thought, and ran downstairs without inquiry. I was passing the back-parlour or teachers’ sitting-room, the door of which was half open, to go to the kitchen, when some one ran out— “It’s her, I am sure!—I could have told her anywhere!” cried the individual who stopped my progress and took my hand. I looked: I saw a woman attired like a well-dressed servant, matronly, yet still young; very good-looking, with black hair and eyes, and lively complexion. “Well, who is it?” she asked, in a voice and with a smile I half recognised; “you’ve not quite forgotten me, I think, Miss Jane?” In another second I was embracing and kissing her rapturously: “Bessie! Bessie! Bessie!” that was all I said; whereat she half laughed, half cried, and we both went into the parlour. By the fire stood a little fellow of three years old, in plaid frock and trousers. “That is my little boy,” said Bessie directly. “Then you are married, Bessie?” “Yes; nearly five years since to Robert Leaven, the coachman; and I’ve a little girl besides Bobby there, that I’ve christened Jane.” “And you don’t live at Gateshead?” “I live at the lodge: the old porter has left.” “Well, and how do they all get on? Tell me everything about them, Bessie: but sit down first; and, Bobby, come and sit on my knee, will you?” but Bobby preferred sidling over to his mother. “You’re not grown so very tall, Miss Jane, nor so very stout,” continued Mrs. Leaven. “I dare say they’ve not kept you too well at school: Miss Reed is the head and shoulders taller than you are; and Miss Georgiana would make two of you in breadth.” “Georgiana is handsome, I suppose, Bessie?” “Very. She went up to London last winter with her mama, and there everybody admired her, and a young lord fell in love with her: but his relations were against the match; and—what do you think?—he and Miss Georgiana made it up to run away; but they were found out and stopped. It was Miss Reed that found them out: I believe she was envious; and now she and her sister lead a cat and dog life together; they are always quarrelling—” “Well, and what of John Reed?” “Oh, he is not doing so well as his mama could wish. He went to college, and he got—plucked, I think they call it: and then his uncles wanted him to be a barrister, and study the law: but he is such a dissipated young man, they will never make much of him, I think.” “What does he look like?” “He is very tall: some people call him a fine-looking young man; but he has such thick lips.” “And Mrs. Reed?” “Missis looks stout and well enough in the face, but I think she’s not quite easy in her mind: Mr. John’s conduct does not please her—he spends a deal of money.” “Did she send you here, Bessie?” “No, indeed: but I have long wanted to see you, and when I heard that there had been a letter from you, and that you were going to another part of the country, I thought I’d just set off, and get a look at you before you were quite out of my reach.” “I am afraid you are disappointed in me, Bessie.” I said this laughing: I perceived that Bessie’s glance, though it expressed regard, did in no shape denote admiration. “No, Miss Jane, not exactly: you are genteel enough; you look like a lady, and it is as much as ever I expected of you: you were no beauty as a child.” I smiled at Bessie’s frank answer: I felt that it was correct, but I confess I was not quite indifferent to its import: at eighteen most people wish to please, and the conviction that they have not an exterior likely to second that desire brings anything but gratification. “I dare say you are clever, though,” continued Bessie, by way of solace. “What can you do? Can you play on the piano?” “A little.” There was one in the room; Bessie went and opened it, and then asked me to sit down and give her a tune: I played a waltz or two, and she was charmed. “The Miss Reeds could not play as well!” said she exultingly. “I always said you would surpass them in learning: and can you draw?” “That is one of my paintings over the chimney-piece.” It was a landscape in water colours, of which I had made a present to the superintendent, in acknowledgment of her obliging mediation with the committee on my behalf, and which she had framed and glazed. “Well, that is beautiful, Miss Jane! It is as fine a picture as any Miss Reed’s drawing-master could paint, let alone the young ladies themselves, who could not come near it: and have you learnt French?” “Yes, Bessie, I can both read it and speak it.” “And you can work on muslin and canvas?” “I can.” “Oh, you are quite a lady, Miss Jane! I knew you would be: you will get on whether your relations notice you or not. There was something I wanted to ask you. Have you ever heard anything from your father’s kinsfolk, the Eyres?” “Never in my life.” “Well, you know Missis always said they were poor and quite despicable: and they may be poor; but I believe they are as much gentry as the Reeds are; for one day, nearly seven years ago, a Mr. Eyre came to Gateshead and wanted to see you; Missis said you were at school fifty miles off; he seemed so much disappointed, for he could not stay: he was going on a voyage to a foreign country, and the ship was to sail from London in a day or two. He looked quite a gentleman, and I believe he was your father’s brother.” “What foreign country was he going to, Bessie?” “An island thousands of miles off, where they make wine—the butler did tell me—” “Madeira?” I suggested. “Yes, that is it—that is the very word.” “So he went?” “Yes; he did not stay many minutes in the house: Missis was very high with him; she called him afterwards a ‘sneaking tradesman.’ My Robert believes he was a wine-merchant.” “Very likely,” I returned; “or perhaps clerk or agent to a wine-merchant.” Bessie and I conversed about old times an hour longer, and then she was obliged to leave me: I saw her again for a few minutes the next morning at Lowton, while I was waiting for the coach. We parted finally at the door of the Brocklehurst Arms there: each went her separate way; she set off for the brow of Lowood Fell to meet the conveyance which was to take her back to Gateshead, I mounted the vehicle which was to bear me to new duties and a new life in the unknown environs of Millcote. ', 'A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play; and when I draw up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a room in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large figured papering on the walls as inn rooms have; such a carpet, such furniture, such ornaments on the mantelpiece, such prints, including a portrait of George the Third, and another of the Prince of Wales, and a representation of the death of Wolfe. All this is visible to you by the light of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, and by that of an excellent fire, near which I sit in my cloak and bonnet; my muff and umbrella lie on the table, and I am warming away the numbness and chill contracted by sixteen hours’ exposure to the rawness of an October day: I left Lowton at four o’clock A.M., and the Millcote town clock is now just striking eight. Reader, though I look comfortably accommodated, I am not very tranquil in my mind. I thought when the coach stopped here there would be some one to meet me; I looked anxiously round as I descended the wooden steps the “boots” placed for my convenience, expecting to hear my name pronounced, and to see some description of carriage waiting to convey me to Thornfield. Nothing of the sort was visible; and when I asked a waiter if any one had been to inquire after a Miss Eyre, I was answered in the negative: so I had no resource but to request to be shown into a private room: and here I am waiting, while all sorts of doubts and fears are troubling my thoughts. It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became predominant when half-an-hour elapsed and still I was alone. I bethought myself to ring the bell. “Is there a place in this neighbourhood called Thornfield?” I asked of the waiter who answered the summons. “Thornfield? I don’t know, ma’am; I’ll inquire at the bar.” He vanished, but reappeared instantly— “Is your name Eyre, Miss?” “Yes.” “Person here waiting for you.” I jumped up, took my muff and umbrella, and hastened into the inn-passage: a man was standing by the open door, and in the lamp-lit street I dimly saw a one-horse conveyance. “This will be your luggage, I suppose?” said the man rather abruptly when he saw me, pointing to my trunk in the passage. “Yes.” He hoisted it on to the vehicle, which was a sort of car, and then I got in; before he shut me up, I asked him how far it was to Thornfield. “A matter of six miles.” “How long shall we be before we get there?” “Happen an hour and a half.” He fastened the car door, climbed to his own seat outside, and we set off. Our progress was leisurely, and gave me ample time to reflect; I was content to be at length so near the end of my journey; and as I leaned back in the comfortable though not elegant conveyance, I meditated much at my ease. “I suppose,” thought I, “judging from the plainness of the servant and carriage, Mrs. Fairfax is not a very dashing person: so much the better; I never lived amongst fine people but once, and I was very miserable with them. I wonder if she lives alone except this little girl; if so, and if she is in any degree amiable, I shall surely be able to get on with her; I will do my best; it is a pity that doing one’s best does not always answer. At Lowood, indeed, I took that resolution, kept it, and succeeded in pleasing; but with Mrs. Reed, I remember my best was always spurned with scorn. I pray God Mrs. Fairfax may not turn out a second Mrs. Reed; but if she does, I am not bound to stay with her! let the worst come to the worst, I can advertise again. How far are we on our road now, I wonder?” I let down the window and looked out; Millcote was behind us; judging by the number of its lights, it seemed a place of considerable magnitude, much larger than Lowton. We were now, as far as I could see, on a sort of common; but there were houses scattered all over the district; I felt we were in a different region to Lowood, more populous, less picturesque; more stirring, less romantic. The roads were heavy, the night misty; my conductor let his horse walk all the way, and the hour and a half extended, I verily believe, to two hours; at last he turned in his seat and said— “You’re noan so far fro’ Thornfield now.” Again I looked out: we were passing a church; I saw its low broad tower against the sky, and its bell was tolling a quarter; I saw a narrow galaxy of lights too, on a hillside, marking a village or hamlet. About ten minutes after, the driver got down and opened a pair of gates: we passed through, and they clashed to behind us. We now slowly ascended a drive, and came upon the long front of a house: candlelight gleamed from one curtained bow-window; all the rest were dark. The car stopped at the front door; it was opened by a maid-servant; I alighted and went in. “Will you walk this way, ma’am?” said the girl; and I followed her across a square hall with high doors all round: she ushered me into a room whose double illumination of fire and candle at first dazzled me, contrasting as it did with the darkness to which my eyes had been for two hours inured; when I could see, however, a cosy and agreeable picture presented itself to my view. A snug small room; a round table by a cheerful fire; an arm-chair high-backed and old-fashioned, wherein sat the neatest imaginable little elderly lady, in widow’s cap, black silk gown, and snowy muslin apron; exactly like what I had fancied Mrs. Fairfax, only less stately and milder looking. She was occupied in knitting; a large cat sat demurely at her feet; nothing in short was wanting to complete the beau-ideal of domestic comfort. A more reassuring introduction for a new governess could scarcely be conceived; there was no grandeur to overwhelm, no stateliness to embarrass; and then, as I entered, the old lady got up and promptly and kindly came forward to meet me. “How do you do, my dear? I am afraid you have had a tedious ride; John drives so slowly; you must be cold, come to the fire.” “Mrs. Fairfax, I suppose?” said I. “Yes, you are right: do sit down.” She conducted me to her own chair, and then began to remove my shawl and untie my bonnet-strings; I begged she would not give herself so much trouble. “Oh, it is no trouble; I dare say your own hands are almost numbed with cold. Leah, make a little hot negus and cut a sandwich or two: here are the keys of the storeroom.” And she produced from her pocket a most housewifely bunch of keys, and delivered them to the servant. “Now, then, draw nearer to the fire,” she continued. “You’ve brought your luggage with you, haven’t you, my dear?” “Yes, ma’am.” “I’ll see it carried into your room,” she said, and bustled out. “She treats me like a visitor,” thought I. “I little expected such a reception; I anticipated only coldness and stiffness: this is not like what I have heard of the treatment of governesses; but I must not exult too soon.” She returned; with her own hands cleared her knitting apparatus and a book or two from the table, to make room for the tray which Leah now brought, and then herself handed me the refreshments. I felt rather confused at being the object of more attention than I had ever before received, and, that too, shown by my employer and superior; but as she did not herself seem to consider she was doing anything out of her place, I thought it better to take her civilities quietly. “Shall I have the pleasure of seeing Miss Fairfax to-night?” I asked, when I had partaken of what she offered me. “What did you say, my dear? I am a little deaf,” returned the good lady, approaching her ear to my mouth. I repeated the question more distinctly. “Miss Fairfax? Oh, you mean Miss Varens! Varens is the name of your future pupil.” “Indeed! Then she is not your daughter?” “No,—I have no family.” I should have followed up my first inquiry, by asking in what way Miss Varens was connected with her; but I recollected it was not polite to ask too many questions: besides, I was sure to hear in time. “I am so glad,” she continued, as she sat down opposite to me, and took the cat on her knee; “I am so glad you are come; it will be quite pleasant living here now with a companion. To be sure it is pleasant at any time; for Thornfield is a fine old hall, rather neglected of late years perhaps, but still it is a respectable place; yet you know in winter-time one feels dreary quite alone in the best quarters. I say alone—Leah is a nice girl to be sure, and John and his wife are very decent people; but then you see they are only servants, and one can’t converse with them on terms of equality: one must keep them at due distance, for fear of losing one’s authority. I’m sure last winter (it was a very severe one, if you recollect, and when it did not snow, it rained and blew), not a creature but the butcher and postman came to the house, from November till February; and I really got quite melancholy with sitting night after night alone; I had Leah in to read to me sometimes; but I don’t think the poor girl liked the task much: she felt it confining. In spring and summer one got on better: sunshine and long days make such a difference; and then, just at the commencement of this autumn, little Adela Varens came and her nurse: a child makes a house alive all at once; and now you are here I shall be quite gay.” My heart really warmed to the worthy lady as I heard her talk; and I drew my chair a little nearer to her, and expressed my sincere wish that she might find my company as agreeable as she anticipated. “But I’ll not keep you sitting up late to-night,” said she; “it is on the stroke of twelve now, and you have been travelling all day: you must feel tired. If you have got your feet well warmed, I’ll show you your bedroom. I’ve had the room next to mine prepared for you; it is only a small apartment, but I thought you would like it better than one of the large front chambers: to be sure they have finer furniture, but they are so dreary and solitary, I never sleep in them myself.” I thanked her for her considerate choice, and as I really felt fatigued with my long journey, expressed my readiness to retire. She took her candle, and I followed her from the room. First she went to see if the hall-door was fastened; having taken the key from the lock, she led the way upstairs. The steps and banisters were of oak; the staircase window was high and latticed; both it and the long gallery into which the bedroom doors opened looked as if they belonged to a church rather than a house. A very chill and vault-like air pervaded the stairs and gallery, suggesting cheerless ideas of space and solitude; and I was glad, when finally ushered into my chamber, to find it of small dimensions, and furnished in ordinary, modern style. When Mrs. Fairfax had bidden me a kind good-night, and I had fastened my door, gazed leisurely round, and in some measure effaced the eerie impression made by that wide hall, that dark and spacious staircase, and that long, cold gallery, by the livelier aspect of my little room, I remembered that, after a day of bodily fatigue and mental anxiety, I was now at last in safe haven. The impulse of gratitude swelled my heart, and I knelt down at the bedside, and offered up thanks where thanks were due; not forgetting, ere I rose, to implore aid on my further path, and the power of meriting the kindness which seemed so frankly offered me before it was earned. My couch had no thorns in it that night; my solitary room no fears. At once weary and content, I slept soon and soundly: when I awoke it was broad day. The chamber looked such a bright little place to me as the sun shone in between the gay blue chintz window curtains, showing papered walls and a carpeted floor, so unlike the bare planks and stained plaster of Lowood, that my spirits rose at the view. Externals have a great effect on the young: I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me, one that was to have its flowers and pleasures, as well as its thorns and toils. My faculties, roused by the change of scene, the new field offered to hope, seemed all astir. I cannot precisely define what they expected, but it was something pleasant: not perhaps that day or that month, but at an indefinite future period. I rose; I dressed myself with care: obliged to be plain—for I had no article of attire that was not made with extreme simplicity—I was still by nature solicitous to be neat. It was not my habit to be disregardful of appearance or careless of the impression I made: on the contrary, I ever wished to look as well as I could, and to please as much as my want of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and had features so irregular and so marked. And why had I these aspirations and these regrets? It would be difficult to say: I could not then distinctly say it to myself; yet I had a reason, and a logical, natural reason too. However, when I had brushed my hair very smooth, and put on my black frock—which, Quakerlike as it was, at least had the merit of fitting to a nicety—and adjusted my clean white tucker, I thought I should do respectably enough to appear before Mrs. Fairfax, and that my new pupil would not at least recoil from me with antipathy. Having opened my chamber window, and seen that I left all things straight and neat on the toilet table, I ventured forth. Traversing the long and matted gallery, I descended the slippery steps of oak; then I gained the hall: I halted there a minute; I looked at some pictures on the walls (one, I remember, represented a grim man in a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace), at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was of oak curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing. Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I was so little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green fields; advancing on to the lawn, I looked up and surveyed the front of the mansion. It was three storeys high, of proportions not vast, though considerable: a gentleman’s manor-house, not a nobleman’s seat: battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front stood out well from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants were now on the wing: they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence, and where an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong, knotty, and broad as oaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion’s designation. Farther off were hills: not so lofty as those round Lowood, nor so craggy, nor so like barriers of separation from the living world; but yet quiet and lonely hills enough, and seeming to embrace Thornfield with a seclusion I had not expected to find existent so near the stirring locality of Millcote. A little hamlet, whose roofs were blent with trees, straggled up the side of one of these hills; the church of the district stood nearer Thornfield: its old tower-top looked over a knoll between the house and gates. I was yet enjoying the calm prospect and pleasant fresh air, yet listening with delight to the cawing of the rooks, yet surveying the wide, hoary front of the hall, and thinking what a great place it was for one lonely little dame like Mrs. Fairfax to inhabit, when that lady appeared at the door. “What! out already?” said she. “I see you are an early riser.” I went up to her, and was received with an affable kiss and shake of the hand. “How do you like Thornfield?” she asked. I told her I liked it very much. “Yes,” she said, “it is a pretty place; but I fear it will be getting out of order, unless Mr. Rochester should take it into his head to come and reside here permanently; or, at least, visit it rather oftener: great houses and fine grounds require the presence of the proprietor.” “Mr. Rochester!” I exclaimed. “Who is he?” “The owner of Thornfield,” she responded quietly. “Did you not know he was called Rochester?” Of course I did not—I had never heard of him before; but the old lady seemed to regard his existence as a universally understood fact, with which everybody must be acquainted by instinct. “I thought,” I continued, “Thornfield belonged to you.” “To me? Bless you, child; what an idea! To me! I am only the housekeeper—the manager. To be sure I am distantly related to the Rochesters by the mother’s side, or at least my husband was; he was a clergyman, incumbent of Hay—that little village yonder on the hill—and that church near the gates was his. The present Mr. Rochester’s mother was a Fairfax, and second cousin to my husband: but I never presume on the connection—in fact, it is nothing to me; I consider myself quite in the light of an ordinary housekeeper: my employer is always civil, and I expect nothing more.” “And the little girl—my pupil!” “She is Mr. Rochester’s ward; he commissioned me to find a governess for her. He intended to have her brought up in ——shire, I believe. Here she comes, with her ‘bonne,’ as she calls her nurse.” The enigma then was explained: this affable and kind little widow was no great dame; but a dependent like myself. I did not like her the worse for that; on the contrary, I felt better pleased than ever. The equality between her and me was real; not the mere result of condescension on her part: so much the better—my position was all the freer. As I was meditating on this discovery, a little girl, followed by her attendant, came running up the lawn. I looked at my pupil, who did not at first appear to notice me: she was quite a child, perhaps seven or eight years old, slightly built, with a pale, small-featured face, and a redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist. “Good morning, Miss Adela,” said Mrs. Fairfax. “Come and speak to the lady who is to teach you, and to make you a clever woman some day.” She approached. “C’est là ma gouvernante!” said she, pointing to me, and addressing her nurse; who answered— “Mais oui, certainement.” “Are they foreigners?” I inquired, amazed at hearing the French language. “The nurse is a foreigner, and Adela was born on the Continent; and, I believe, never left it till within six months ago. When she first came here she could speak no English; now she can make shift to talk it a little: I don’t understand her, she mixes it so with French; but you will make out her meaning very well, I dare say.” Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily—applying myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela. She came and shook hands with me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue: she replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently. “Ah!” cried she, in French, “you speak my language as well as Mr. Rochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Sophie. She will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame Fairfax is all English. Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked—how it did smoke!—and I was sick, and so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Sophie and I had little beds in another place. I nearly fell out of mine; it was like a shelf. And Mademoiselle—what is your name?” “Eyre—Jane Eyre.” “Aire? Bah! I cannot say it. Well, our ship stopped in the morning, before it was quite daylight, at a great city—a huge city, with very dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an hotel. We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees, called the Park; and there were many children there besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with crumbs.” “Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?” asked Mrs. Fairfax. I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent tongue of Madame Pierrot. “I wish,” continued the good lady, “you would ask her a question or two about her parents: I wonder if she remembers them?” “Adèle,” I inquired, “with whom did you live when you were in that pretty clean town you spoke of?” “I lived long ago with mama; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin. Mama used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses. A great many gentlemen and ladies came to see mama, and I used to dance before them, or to sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it. Shall I let you hear me sing now?” She had finished her breakfast, so I permitted her to give a specimen of her accomplishments. Descending from her chair, she came and placed herself on my knee; then, folding her little hands demurely before her, shaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the ceiling, she commenced singing a song from some opera. It was the strain of a forsaken lady, who, after bewailing the perfidy of her lover, calls pride to her aid; desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest jewels and richest robes, and resolves to meet the false one that night at a ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her demeanour, how little his desertion has affected her. The subject seemed strangely chosen for an infant singer; but I suppose the point of the exhibition lay in hearing the notes of love and jealousy warbled with the lisp of childhood; and in very bad taste that point was: at least I thought so. Adèle sang the canzonette tunefully enough, and with the _naïveté_ of her age. This achieved, she jumped from my knee and said, “Now, Mademoiselle, I will repeat you some poetry.” Assuming an attitude, she began, “La Ligue des Rats: fable de La Fontaine.” She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to punctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of voice and an appropriateness of gesture, very unusual indeed at her age, and which proved she had been carefully trained. “Was it your mama who taught you that piece?” I asked. “Yes, and she just used to say it in this way: ‘Qu’avez vous donc? lui dit un de ces rats; parlez!’ She made me lift my hand—so—to remind me to raise my voice at the question. Now shall I dance for you?” “No, that will do: but after your mama went to the Holy Virgin, as you say, with whom did you live then?” “With Madame Frédéric and her husband: she took care of me, but she is nothing related to me. I think she is poor, for she had not so fine a house as mama. I was not long there. Mr. Rochester asked me if I would like to go and live with him in England, and I said yes; for I knew Mr. Rochester before I knew Madame Frédéric, and he was always kind to me and gave me pretty dresses and toys: but you see he has not kept his word, for he has brought me to England, and now he is gone back again himself, and I never see him.” After breakfast, Adèle and I withdrew to the library, which room, it appears, Mr. Rochester had directed should be used as the schoolroom. Most of the books were locked up behind glass doors; but there was one bookcase left open containing everything that could be needed in the way of elementary works, and several volumes of light literature, poetry, biography, travels, a few romances, &c. I suppose he had considered that these were all the governess would require for her private perusal; and, indeed, they contented me amply for the present; compared with the scanty pickings I had now and then been able to glean at Lowood, they seemed to offer an abundant harvest of entertainment and information. In this room, too, there was a cabinet piano, quite new and of superior tone; also an easel for painting and a pair of globes. I found my pupil sufficiently docile, though disinclined to apply: she had not been used to regular occupation of any kind. I felt it would be injudicious to confine her too much at first; so, when I had talked to her a great deal, and got her to learn a little, and when the morning had advanced to noon, I allowed her to return to her nurse. I then proposed to occupy myself till dinner-time in drawing some little sketches for her use. As I was going upstairs to fetch my portfolio and pencils, Mrs. Fairfax called to me: “Your morning school-hours are over now, I suppose,” said she. She was in a room the folding-doors of which stood open: I went in when she addressed me. It was a large, stately apartment, with purple chairs and curtains, a Turkey carpet, walnut-panelled walls, one vast window rich in stained glass, and a lofty ceiling, nobly moulded. Mrs. Fairfax was dusting some vases of fine purple spar, which stood on a sideboard. “What a beautiful room!” I exclaimed, as I looked round; for I had never before seen any half so imposing. “Yes; this is the dining-room. I have just opened the window, to let in a little air and sunshine; for everything gets so damp in apartments that are seldom inhabited; the drawing-room yonder feels like a vault.” She pointed to a wide arch corresponding to the window, and hung like it with a Tyrian-dyed curtain, now looped up. Mounting to it by two broad steps, and looking through, I thought I caught a glimpse of a fairy place, so bright to my novice-eyes appeared the view beyond. Yet it was merely a very pretty drawing-room, and within it a boudoir, both spread with white carpets, on which seemed laid brilliant garlands of flowers; both ceiled with snowy mouldings of white grapes and vine-leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast crimson couches and ottomans; while the ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of sparkling Bohemian glass, ruby red; and between the windows large mirrors repeated the general blending of snow and fire. “In what order you keep these rooms, Mrs. Fairfax!” said I. “No dust, no canvas coverings: except that the air feels chilly, one would think they were inhabited daily.” “Why, Miss Eyre, though Mr. Rochester’s visits here are rare, they are always sudden and unexpected; and as I observed that it put him out to find everything swathed up, and to have a bustle of arrangement on his arrival, I thought it best to keep the rooms in readiness.” “Is Mr. Rochester an exacting, fastidious sort of man?” “Not particularly so; but he has a gentleman’s tastes and habits, and he expects to have things managed in conformity to them.” “Do you like him? Is he generally liked?” “Oh, yes; the family have always been respected here. Almost all the land in this neighbourhood, as far as you can see, has belonged to the Rochesters time out of mind.” “Well, but, leaving his land out of the question, do you like him? Is he liked for himself?” “_I_ have no cause to do otherwise than like him; and I believe he is considered a just and liberal landlord by his tenants: but he has never lived much amongst them.” “But has he no peculiarities? What, in short, is his character?” “Oh! his character is unimpeachable, I suppose. He is rather peculiar, perhaps: he has travelled a great deal, and seen a great deal of the world, I should think. I dare say he is clever, but I never had much conversation with him.” “In what way is he peculiar?” “I don’t know—it is not easy to describe—nothing striking, but you feel it when he speaks to you; you cannot be always sure whether he is in jest or earnest, whether he is pleased or the contrary; you don’t thoroughly understand him, in short—at least, I don’t: but it is of no consequence, he is a very good master.” This was all the account I got from Mrs. Fairfax of her employer and mine. There are people who seem to have no notion of sketching a character, or observing and describing salient points, either in persons or things: the good lady evidently belonged to this class; my queries puzzled, but did not draw her out. Mr. Rochester was Mr. Rochester in her eyes; a gentleman, a landed proprietor—nothing more: she inquired and searched no further, and evidently wondered at my wish to gain a more definite notion of his identity. When we left the dining-room, she proposed to show me over the rest of the house; and I followed her upstairs and downstairs, admiring as I went; for all was well arranged and handsome. The large front chambers I thought especially grand: and some of the third-storey rooms, though dark and low, were interesting from their air of antiquity. The furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to time been removed here, as fashions changed: and the imperfect light entering by their narrow casement showed bedsteads of a hundred years old; chests in oak or walnut, looking, with their strange carvings of palm branches and cherubs’ heads, like types of the Hebrew ark; rows of venerable chairs, high-backed and narrow; stools still more antiquated, on whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced embroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had been coffin-dust. All these relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine of memory. I liked the hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by no means coveted a night’s repose on one of those wide and heavy beds: shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought old English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings,—all which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight. “Do the servants sleep in these rooms?” I asked. “No; they occupy a range of smaller apartments to the back; no one ever sleeps here: one would almost say that, if there were a ghost at Thornfield Hall, this would be its haunt.” “So I think: you have no ghost, then?” “None that I ever heard of,” returned Mrs. Fairfax, smiling. “Nor any traditions of one? no legends or ghost stories?” “I believe not. And yet it is said the Rochesters have been rather a violent than a quiet race in their time: perhaps, though, that is the reason they rest tranquilly in their graves now.” “Yes—‘after life’s fitful fever they sleep well,’” I muttered. “Where are you going now, Mrs. Fairfax?” for she was moving away. “On to the leads; will you come and see the view from thence?” I followed still, up a very narrow staircase to the attics, and thence by a ladder and through a trap-door to the roof of the hall. I was now on a level with the crow colony, and could see into their nests. Leaning over the battlements and looking far down, I surveyed the grounds laid out like a map: the bright and velvet lawn closely girdling the grey base of the mansion; the field, wide as a park, dotted with its ancient timber; the wood, dun and sere, divided by a path visibly overgrown, greener with moss than the trees were with foliage; the church at the gates, the road, the tranquil hills, all reposing in the autumn day’s sun; the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white. No feature in the scene was extraordinary, but all was pleasing. When I turned from it and repassed the trap-door, I could scarcely see my way down the ladder; the attic seemed black as a vault compared with that arch of blue air to which I had been looking up, and to that sunlit scene of grove, pasture, and green hill, of which the hall was the centre, and over which I had been gazing with delight. Mrs. Fairfax stayed behind a moment to fasten the trap-door; I, by dint of groping, found the outlet from the attic, and proceeded to descend the narrow garret staircase. I lingered in the long passage to which this led, separating the front and back rooms of the third storey: narrow, low, and dim, with only one little window at the far end, and looking, with its two rows of small black doors all shut, like a corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle. While I paced softly on, the last sound I expected to hear in so still a region, a laugh, struck my ear. It was a curious laugh; distinct, formal, mirthless. I stopped: the sound ceased, only for an instant; it began again, louder: for at first, though distinct, it was very low. It passed off in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every lonely chamber; though it originated but in one, and I could have pointed out the door whence the accents issued. “Mrs. Fairfax!” I called out: for I now heard her descending the great stairs. “Did you hear that loud laugh? Who is it?” “Some of the servants, very likely,” she answered: “perhaps Grace Poole.” “Did you hear it?” I again inquired. “Yes, plainly: I often hear her: she sews in one of these rooms. Sometimes Leah is with her; they are frequently noisy together.” The laugh was repeated in its low, syllabic tone, and terminated in an odd murmur. “Grace!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax. I really did not expect any Grace to answer; for the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it was high noon, and that no circumstance of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachinnation; but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid. However, the event showed me I was a fool for entertaining a sense even of surprise. The door nearest me opened, and a servant came out,—a woman of between thirty and forty; a set, square-made figure, red-haired, and with a hard, plain face: any apparition less romantic or less ghostly could scarcely be conceived. “Too much noise, Grace,” said Mrs. Fairfax. “Remember directions!” Grace curtseyed silently and went in. “She is a person we have to sew and assist Leah in her housemaid’s work,” continued the widow; “not altogether unobjectionable in some points, but she does well enough. By-the-bye, how have you got on with your new pupil this morning?” The conversation, thus turned on Adèle, continued till we reached the light and cheerful region below. Adèle came running to meet us in the hall, exclaiming— “Mesdames, vous êtes servies!” adding, “J’ai bien faim, moi!” We found dinner ready, and waiting for us in Mrs. Fairfax’s room. ', 'The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction to Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer acquaintance with the place and its inmates. Mrs. Fairfax turned out to be what she appeared, a placid-tempered, kind-natured woman, of competent education and average intelligence. My pupil was a lively child, who had been spoilt and indulged, and therefore was sometimes wayward; but as she was committed entirely to my care, and no injudicious interference from any quarter ever thwarted my plans for her improvement, she soon forgot her little freaks, and became obedient and teachable. She had no great talents, no marked traits of character, no peculiar development of feeling or taste which raised her one inch above the ordinary level of childhood; but neither had she any deficiency or vice which sunk her below it. She made reasonable progress, entertained for me a vivacious, though perhaps not very profound, affection; and by her simplicity, gay prattle, and efforts to please, inspired me, in return, with a degree of attachment sufficient to make us both content in each other’s society. This, _par parenthèse_, will be thought cool language by persons who entertain solemn doctrines about the angelic nature of children, and the duty of those charged with their education to conceive for them an idolatrous devotion: but I am not writing to flatter parental egotism, to echo cant, or prop up humbug; I am merely telling the truth. I felt a conscientious solicitude for Adèle’s welfare and progress, and a quiet liking for her little self: just as I cherished towards Mrs. Fairfax a thankfulness for her kindness, and a pleasure in her society proportionate to the tranquil regard she had for me, and the moderation of her mind and character. Anybody may blame me who likes, when I add further, that, now and then, when I took a walk by myself in the grounds; when I went down to the gates and looked through them along the road; or when, while Adèle played with her nurse, and Mrs. Fairfax made jellies in the storeroom, I climbed the three staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and having reached the leads, looked out afar over sequestered field and hill, and along dim sky-line—that then I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen—that then I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax, and what was good in Adèle; but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold. Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it—and, certainly, they were many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement, which, while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of all, to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended—a tale my imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence. It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. When thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh: the same peal, the same low, slow ha! ha! which, when first heard, had thrilled me: I heard, too, her eccentric murmurs; stranger than her laugh. There were days when she was quite silent; but there were others when I could not account for the sounds she made. Sometimes I saw her: she would come out of her room with a basin, or a plate, or a tray in her hand, go down to the kitchen and shortly return, generally (oh, romantic reader, forgive me for telling the plain truth!) bearing a pot of porter. Her appearance always acted as a damper to the curiosity raised by her oral oddities: hard-featured and staid, she had no point to which interest could attach. I made some attempts to draw her into conversation, but she seemed a person of few words: a monosyllabic reply usually cut short every effort of that sort. The other members of the household, viz., John and his wife, Leah the housemaid, and Sophie the French nurse, were decent people; but in no respect remarkable; with Sophie I used to talk French, and sometimes I asked her questions about her native country; but she was not of a descriptive or narrative turn, and generally gave such vapid and confused answers as were calculated rather to check than encourage inquiry. October, November, December passed away. One afternoon in January, Mrs. Fairfax had begged a holiday for Adèle, because she had a cold; and, as Adèle seconded the request with an ardour that reminded me how precious occasional holidays had been to me in my own childhood, I accorded it, deeming that I did well in showing pliability on the point. It was a fine, calm day, though very cold; I was tired of sitting still in the library through a whole long morning: Mrs. Fairfax had just written a letter which was waiting to be posted, so I put on my bonnet and cloak and volunteered to carry it to Hay; the distance, two miles, would be a pleasant winter afternoon walk. Having seen Adèle comfortably seated in her little chair by Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour fireside, and given her her best wax doll (which I usually kept enveloped in silver paper in a drawer) to play with, and a story-book for change of amusement; and having replied to her “Revenez bientôt, ma bonne amie, ma chère Mdlle. Jeannette,” with a kiss, I set out. The ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely; I walked fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was three o’clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, it made no sound here; for there was not a holly, not an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as the white, worn stones which causewayed the middle of the path. Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the little brown birds, which stirred occasionally in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had forgotten to drop. This lane inclined up-hill all the way to Hay; having reached the middle, I sat down on a stile which led thence into a field. Gathering my mantle about me, and sheltering my hands in my muff, I did not feel the cold, though it froze keenly; as was attested by a sheet of ice covering the causeway, where a little brooklet, now congealed, had overflowed after a rapid thaw some days since. From my seat I could look down on Thornfield: the grey and battlemented hall was the principal object in the vale below me; its woods and dark rookery rose against the west. I lingered till the sun went down amongst the trees, and sank crimson and clear behind them. I then turned eastward. On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon; pale yet as a cloud, but brightening momentarily, she looked over Hay, which, half lost in trees, sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys: it was yet a mile distant, but in the absolute hush I could hear plainly its thin murmurs of life. My ear, too, felt the flow of currents; in what dales and depths I could not tell: but there were many hills beyond Hay, and doubtless many becks threading their passes. That evening calm betrayed alike the tinkle of the nearest streams, the sough of the most remote. A rude noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at once so far away and so clear: a positive tramp, tramp, a metallic clatter, which effaced the soft wave-wanderings; as, in a picture, the solid mass of a crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn in dark and strong on the foreground, efface the aërial distance of azure hill, sunny horizon, and blended clouds where tint melts into tint. The din was on the causeway: a horse was coming; the windings of the lane yet hid it, but it approached. I was just leaving the stile; yet, as the path was narrow, I sat still to let it go by. In those days I was young, and all sorts of fancies bright and dark tenanted my mind: the memories of nursery stories were there amongst other rubbish; and when they recurred, maturing youth added to them a vigour and vividness beyond what childhood could give. As this horse approached, and as I watched for it to appear through the dusk, I remembered certain of Bessie’s tales, wherein figured a North-of-England spirit called a “Gytrash,” which, in the form of horse, mule, or large dog, haunted solitary ways, and sometimes came upon belated travellers, as this horse was now coming upon me. It was very near, but not yet in sight; when, in addition to the tramp, tramp, I heard a rush under the hedge, and close down by the hazel stems glided a great dog, whose black and white colour made him a distinct object against the trees. It was exactly one form of Bessie’s Gytrash—a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head: it passed me, however, quietly enough; not staying to look up, with strange pretercanine eyes, in my face, as I half expected it would. The horse followed,—a tall steed, and on its back a rider. The man, the human being, broke the spell at once. Nothing ever rode the Gytrash: it was always alone; and goblins, to my notions, though they might tenant the dumb carcasses of beasts, could scarce covet shelter in the commonplace human form. No Gytrash was this,—only a traveller taking the short cut to Millcote. He passed, and I went on; a few steps, and I turned: a sliding sound and an exclamation of “What the deuce is to do now?” and a clattering tumble, arrested my attention. Man and horse were down; they had slipped on the sheet of ice which glazed the causeway. The dog came bounding back, and seeing his master in a predicament, and hearing the horse groan, barked till the evening hills echoed the sound, which was deep in proportion to his magnitude. He snuffed round the prostrate group, and then he ran up to me; it was all he could do,—there was no other help at hand to summon. I obeyed him, and walked down to the traveller, by this time struggling himself free of his steed. His efforts were so vigorous, I thought he could not be much hurt; but I asked him the question— “Are you injured, sir?” I think he was swearing, but am not certain; however, he was pronouncing some formula which prevented him from replying to me directly. “Can I do anything?” I asked again. “You must just stand on one side,” he answered as he rose, first to his knees, and then to his feet. I did; whereupon began a heaving, stamping, clattering process, accompanied by a barking and baying which removed me effectually some yards’ distance; but I would not be driven quite away till I saw the event. This was finally fortunate; the horse was re-established, and the dog was silenced with a “Down, Pilot!” The traveller now, stooping, felt his foot and leg, as if trying whether they were sound; apparently something ailed them, for he halted to the stile whence I had just risen, and sat down. I was in the mood for being useful, or at least officious, I think, for I now drew near him again. “If you are hurt, and want help, sir, I can fetch some one either from Thornfield Hall or from Hay.” “Thank you: I shall do: I have no broken bones,—only a sprain;” and again he stood up and tried his foot, but the result extorted an involuntary “Ugh!” Something of daylight still lingered, and the moon was waxing bright: I could see him plainly. His figure was enveloped in a riding cloak, fur collared and steel clasped; its details were not apparent, but I traced the general points of middle height and considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he was past youth, but had not reached middle-age; perhaps he might be thirty-five. I felt no fear of him, and but little shyness. Had he been a handsome, heroic-looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioning him against his will, and offering my services unasked. I had hardly ever seen a handsome youth; never in my life spoken to one. I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic. If even this stranger had smiled and been good-humoured to me when I addressed him; if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and with thanks, I should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew inquiries: but the frown, the roughness of the traveller, set me at my ease: I retained my station when he waved to me to go, and announced— “I cannot think of leaving you, sir, at so late an hour, in this solitary lane, till I see you are fit to mount your horse.” He looked at me when I said this; he had hardly turned his eyes in my direction before. “I should think you ought to be at home yourself,” said he, “if you have a home in this neighbourhood: where do you come from?” “From just below; and I am not at all afraid of being out late when it is moonlight: I will run over to Hay for you with pleasure, if you wish it: indeed, I am going there to post a letter.” “You live just below—do you mean at that house with the battlements?” pointing to Thornfield Hall, on which the moon cast a hoary gleam, bringing it out distinct and pale from the woods that, by contrast with the western sky, now seemed one mass of shadow. “Yes, sir.” “Whose house is it?” “Mr. Rochester’s.” “Do you know Mr. Rochester?” “No, I have never seen him.” “He is not resident, then?” “No.” “Can you tell me where he is?” “I cannot.” “You are not a servant at the hall, of course. You are—” He stopped, ran his eye over my dress, which, as usual, was quite simple: a black merino cloak, a black beaver bonnet; neither of them half fine enough for a lady’s-maid. He seemed puzzled to decide what I was; I helped him. “I am the governess.” “Ah, the governess!” he repeated; “deuce take me, if I had not forgotten! The governess!” and again my raiment underwent scrutiny. In two minutes he rose from the stile: his face expressed pain when he tried to move. “I cannot commission you to fetch help,” he said; “but you may help me a little yourself, if you will be so kind.” “Yes, sir.” “You have not an umbrella that I can use as a stick?” “No.” “Try to get hold of my horse’s bridle and lead him to me: you are not afraid?” I should have been afraid to touch a horse when alone, but when told to do it, I was disposed to obey. I put down my muff on the stile, and went up to the tall steed; I endeavoured to catch the bridle, but it was a spirited thing, and would not let me come near its head; I made effort on effort, though in vain: meantime, I was mortally afraid of its trampling fore-feet. The traveller waited and watched for some time, and at last he laughed. I was mortally afraid of its trampling forefeet “I see,” he said, “the mountain will never be brought to Mahomet, so all you can do is to aid Mahomet to go to the mountain; I must beg of you to come here.” I came. “Excuse me,” he continued: “necessity compels me to make you useful.” He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, and leaning on me with some stress, limped to his horse. Having once caught the bridle, he mastered it directly and sprang to his saddle; grimacing grimly as he made the effort, for it wrenched his sprain. “Now,” said he, releasing his under lip from a hard bite, “just hand me my whip; it lies there under the hedge.” I sought it and found it. “Thank you; now make haste with the letter to Hay, and return as fast as you can.” A touch of a spurred heel made his horse first start and rear, and then bound away; the dog rushed in his traces; all three vanished, “Like heath that, in the wilderness,     The wild wind whirls away.” I took up my muff and walked on. The incident had occurred and was gone for me: it _was_ an incident of no moment, no romance, no interest in a sense; yet it marked with change one single hour of a monotonous life. My help had been needed and claimed; I had given it: I was pleased to have done something; trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was yet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive. The new face, too, was like a new picture introduced to the gallery of memory; and it was dissimilar to all the others hanging there: firstly, because it was masculine; and, secondly, because it was dark, strong, and stern. I had it still before me when I entered Hay, and slipped the letter into the post-office; I saw it as I walked fast down-hill all the way home. When I came to the stile, I stopped a minute, looked round and listened, with an idea that a horse’s hoofs might ring on the causeway again, and that a rider in a cloak, and a Gytrash-like Newfoundland dog, might be again apparent: I saw only the hedge and a pollard willow before me, rising up still and straight to meet the moonbeams; I heard only the faintest waft of wind roaming fitful among the trees round Thornfield, a mile distant; and when I glanced down in the direction of the murmur, my eye, traversing the hall-front, caught a light kindling in a window: it reminded me that I was late, and I hurried on. I did not like re-entering Thornfield. To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to meet tranquil Mrs. Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with her, and her only, was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk,—to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too still existence; of an existence whose very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined! Yes, just as much good as it would do a man tired of sitting still in a “too easy chair” to take a long walk: and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my circumstances, as it would be under his. I lingered at the gates; I lingered on the lawn; I paced backwards and forwards on the pavement; the shutters of the glass door were closed; I could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house—from the grey hollow filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me,—a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance; and for those trembling stars that followed her course; they made my heart tremble, my veins glow when I viewed them. Little things recall us to earth; the clock struck in the hall; that sufficed; I turned from moon and stars, opened a side-door, and went in. The hall was not dark, nor yet was it lit, only by the high-hung bronze lamp; a warm glow suffused both it and the lower steps of the oak staircase. This ruddy shine issued from the great dining-room, whose two-leaved door stood open, and showed a genial fire in the grate, glancing on marble hearth and brass fire-irons, and revealing purple draperies and polished furniture, in the most pleasant radiance. It revealed, too, a group near the mantelpiece: I had scarcely caught it, and scarcely become aware of a cheerful mingling of voices, amongst which I seemed to distinguish the tones of Adèle, when the door closed. I hastened to Mrs. Fairfax’s room; there was a fire there too, but no candle, and no Mrs. Fairfax. Instead, all alone, sitting upright on the rug, and gazing with gravity at the blaze, I beheld a great black and white long-haired dog, just like the Gytrash of the lane. It was so like it that I went forward and said—“Pilot,” and the thing got up and came to me and snuffed me. I caressed him, and he wagged his great tail; but he looked an eerie creature to be alone with, and I could not tell whence he had come. I rang the bell, for I wanted a candle; and I wanted, too, to get an account of this visitant. Leah entered. “What dog is this?” “He came with master.” “With whom?” “With master—Mr. Rochester—he is just arrived.” “Indeed! and is Mrs. Fairfax with him?” “Yes, and Miss Adèle; they are in the dining-room, and John is gone for a surgeon; for master has had an accident; his horse fell and his ankle is sprained.” “Did the horse fall in Hay Lane?” “Yes, coming down-hill; it slipped on some ice.” “Ah! Bring me a candle will you Leah?” Leah brought it; she entered, followed by Mrs. Fairfax, who repeated the news; adding that Mr. Carter the surgeon was come, and was now with Mr. Rochester: then she hurried out to give orders about tea, and I went upstairs to take off my things. ', 'Mr. Rochester, it seems, by the surgeon’s orders, went to bed early that night; nor did he rise soon next morning. When he did come down, it was to attend to business: his agent and some of his tenants were arrived, and waiting to speak with him. Adèle and I had now to vacate the library: it would be in daily requisition as a reception-room for callers. A fire was lit in an apartment upstairs, and there I carried our books, and arranged it for the future schoolroom. I discerned in the course of the morning that Thornfield Hall was a changed place: no longer silent as a church, it echoed every hour or two to a knock at the door, or a clang of the bell; steps, too, often traversed the hall, and new voices spoke in different keys below; a rill from the outer world was flowing through it; it had a master: for my part, I liked it better. Adèle was not easy to teach that day; she could not apply: she kept running to the door and looking over the banisters to see if she could get a glimpse of Mr. Rochester; then she coined pretexts to go downstairs, in order, as I shrewdly suspected, to visit the library, where I knew she was not wanted; then, when I got a little angry, and made her sit still, she continued to talk incessantly of her “ami, Monsieur Edouard Fairfax _de_ Rochester,” as she dubbed him (I had not before heard his prenomens), and to conjecture what presents he had brought her: for it appears he had intimated the night before, that when his luggage came from Millcote, there would be found amongst it a little box in whose contents she had an interest. “Et cela doit signifier,” said she, “qu’il y aura là dedans un cadeau pour moi, et peut-être pour vous aussi, mademoiselle. Monsieur a parlé de vous: il m’a demandé le nom de ma gouvernante, et si elle n’était pas une petite personne, assez mince et un peu pâle. J’ai dit qu’oui: car c’est vrai, n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?” I and my pupil dined as usual in Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour; the afternoon was wild and snowy, and we passed it in the schoolroom. At dark I allowed Adèle to put away books and work, and to run downstairs; for, from the comparative silence below, and from the cessation of appeals to the door-bell, I conjectured that Mr. Rochester was now at liberty. Left alone, I walked to the window; but nothing was to be seen thence: twilight and snowflakes together thickened the air, and hid the very shrubs on the lawn. I let down the curtain and went back to the fireside. In the clear embers I was tracing a view, not unlike a picture I remembered to have seen of the castle of Heidelberg, on the Rhine, when Mrs. Fairfax came in, breaking up by her entrance the fiery mosaic I had been piercing together, and scattering too some heavy unwelcome thoughts that were beginning to throng on my solitude. “Mr. Rochester would be glad if you and your pupil would take tea with him in the drawing-room this evening,” said she: “he has been so much engaged all day that he could not ask to see you before.” “When is his tea-time?” I inquired. “Oh, at six o’clock: he keeps early hours in the country. You had better change your frock now; I will go with you and fasten it. Here is a candle.” “Is it necessary to change my frock?” “Yes, you had better: I always dress for the evening when Mr. Rochester is here.” This additional ceremony seemed somewhat stately; however, I repaired to my room, and, with Mrs. Fairfax’s aid, replaced my black stuff dress by one of black silk; the best and the only additional one I had, except one of light grey, which, in my Lowood notions of the toilette, I thought too fine to be worn, except on first-rate occasions. “You want a brooch,” said Mrs. Fairfax. I had a single little pearl ornament which Miss Temple gave me as a parting keepsake: I put it on, and then we went downstairs. Unused as I was to strangers, it was rather a trial to appear thus formally summoned in Mr. Rochester’s presence. I let Mrs. Fairfax precede me into the dining-room, and kept in her shade as we crossed that apartment; and, passing the arch, whose curtain was now dropped, entered the elegant recess beyond. Two wax candles stood lighted on the table, and two on the mantelpiece; basking in the light and heat of a superb fire, lay Pilot—Adèle knelt near him. Half reclined on a couch appeared Mr. Rochester, his foot supported by the cushion; he was looking at Adèle and the dog: the fire shone full on his face. I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of his black hair. I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim, and no mistake. His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in squareness with his physiognomy: I suppose it was a good figure in the athletic sense of the term—broad chested and thin flanked, though neither tall nor graceful. Mr. Rochester must have been aware of the entrance of Mrs. Fairfax and myself; but it appeared he was not in the mood to notice us, for he never lifted his head as we approached. “Here is Miss Eyre, sir,” said Mrs. Fairfax, in her quiet way. He bowed, still not taking his eyes from the group of the dog and child. “Let Miss Eyre be seated,” said he: and there was something in the forced stiff bow, in the impatient yet formal tone, which seemed further to express, “What the deuce is it to me whether Miss Eyre be there or not? At this moment I am not disposed to accost her.” I sat down quite disembarrassed. A reception of finished politeness would probably have confused me: I could not have returned or repaid it by answering grace and elegance on my part; but harsh caprice laid me under no obligation; on the contrary, a decent quiescence, under the freak of manner, gave me the advantage. Besides, the eccentricity of the proceeding was piquant: I felt interested to see how he would go on. He went on as a statue would, that is, he neither spoke nor moved. Mrs. Fairfax seemed to think it necessary that some one should be amiable, and she began to talk. Kindly, as usual—and, as usual, rather trite—she condoled with him on the pressure of business he had had all day; on the annoyance it must have been to him with that painful sprain: then she commended his patience and perseverance in going through with it. “Madam, I should like some tea,” was the sole rejoinder she got. She hastened to ring the bell; and when the tray came, she proceeded to arrange the cups, spoons, &c., with assiduous celerity. I and Adèle went to the table; but the master did not leave his couch. “Will you hand Mr. Rochester’s cup?” said Mrs. Fairfax to me; “Adèle might perhaps spill it.” I did as requested. As he took the cup from my hand, Adèle, thinking the moment propitious for making a request in my favour, cried out— “N’est-ce pas, monsieur, qu’il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre dans votre petit coffre?” “Who talks of cadeaux?” said he gruffly. “Did you expect a present, Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?” and he searched my face with eyes that I saw were dark, irate, and piercing. “I hardly know, sir; I have little experience of them: they are generally thought pleasant things.” “Generally thought? But what do _you_ think?” “I should be obliged to take time, sir, before I could give you an answer worthy of your acceptance: a present has many faces to it, has it not? and one should consider all, before pronouncing an opinion as to its nature.” “Miss Eyre, you are not so unsophisticated as Adèle: she demands a ‘cadeau,’ clamorously, the moment she sees me: you beat about the bush.” “Because I have less confidence in my deserts than Adèle has: she can prefer the claim of old acquaintance, and the right too of custom; for she says you have always been in the habit of giving her playthings; but if I had to make out a case I should be puzzled, since I am a stranger, and have done nothing to entitle me to an acknowledgment.” “Oh, don’t fall back on over-modesty! I have examined Adèle, and find you have taken great pains with her: she is not bright, she has no talents; yet in a short time she has made much improvement.” “Sir, you have now given me my ‘cadeau;’ I am obliged to you: it is the meed teachers most covet—praise of their pupils’ progress.” “Humph!” said Mr. Rochester, and he took his tea in silence. “Come to the fire,” said the master, when the tray was taken away, and Mrs. Fairfax had settled into a corner with her knitting; while Adèle was leading me by the hand round the room, showing me the beautiful books and ornaments on the consoles and chiffonnières. We obeyed, as in duty bound; Adèle wanted to take a seat on my knee, but she was ordered to amuse herself with Pilot. “You have been resident in my house three months?” “Yes, sir.” “And you came from—?” “From Lowood school, in ——shire.” “Ah! a charitable concern. How long were you there?” “Eight years.” “Eight years! you must be tenacious of life. I thought half the time in such a place would have done up any constitution! No wonder you have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet. Who are your parents?” “I have none.” “Nor ever had, I suppose: do you remember them?” “No.” “I thought not. And so you were waiting for your people when you sat on that stile?” “For whom, sir?” “For the men in green: it was a proper moonlight evening for them. Did I break through one of your rings, that you spread that damned ice on the causeway?” I shook my head. “The men in green all forsook England a hundred years ago,” said I, speaking as seriously as he had done. “And not even in Hay Lane, or the fields about it, could you find a trace of them. I don’t think either summer or harvest, or winter moon, will ever shine on their revels more.” Mrs. Fairfax had dropped her knitting, and, with raised eyebrows, seemed wondering what sort of talk this was. “Well,” resumed Mr. Rochester, “if you disown parents, you must have some sort of kinsfolk: uncles and aunts?” “No; none that I ever saw.” “And your home?” “I have none.” “Where do your brothers and sisters live?” “I have no brothers or sisters.” “Who recommended you to come here?” “I advertised, and Mrs. Fairfax answered my advertisement.” “Yes,” said the good lady, who now knew what ground we were upon, “and I am daily thankful for the choice Providence led me to make. Miss Eyre has been an invaluable companion to me, and a kind and careful teacher to Adèle.” “Don’t trouble yourself to give her a character,” returned Mr. Rochester: “eulogiums will not bias me; I shall judge for myself. She began by felling my horse.” “Sir?” said Mrs. Fairfax. “I have to thank her for this sprain.” The widow looked bewildered. “Miss Eyre, have you ever lived in a town?” “No, sir.” “Have you seen much society?” “None but the pupils and teachers of Lowood, and now the inmates of Thornfield.” “Have you read much?” “Only such books as came in my way; and they have not been numerous or very learned.” “You have lived the life of a nun: no doubt you are well drilled in religious forms;—Brocklehurst, who I understand directs Lowood, is a parson, is he not?” “Yes, sir.” “And you girls probably worshipped him, as a convent full of religieuses would worship their director.” “Oh, no.” “You are very cool! No! What! a novice not worship her priest! That sounds blasphemous.” “I disliked Mr. Brocklehurst; and I was not alone in the feeling. He is a harsh man; at once pompous and meddling; he cut off our hair; and for economy’s sake bought us bad needles and thread, with which we could hardly sew.” “That was very false economy,” remarked Mrs. Fairfax, who now again caught the drift of the dialogue. “And was that the head and front of his offending?” demanded Mr. Rochester. “He starved us when he had the sole superintendence of the provision department, before the committee was appointed; and he bored us with long lectures once a week, and with evening readings from books of his own inditing, about sudden deaths and judgments, which made us afraid to go to bed.” “What age were you when you went to Lowood?” “About ten.” “And you stayed there eight years: you are now, then, eighteen?” I assented. “Arithmetic, you see, is useful; without its aid, I should hardly have been able to guess your age. It is a point difficult to fix where the features and countenance are so much at variance as in your case. And now what did you learn at Lowood? Can you play?” “A little.” “Of course: that is the established answer. Go into the library—I mean, if you please.—(Excuse my tone of command; I am used to say, ‘Do this,’ and it is done: I cannot alter my customary habits for one new inmate.)—Go, then, into the library; take a candle with you; leave the door open; sit down to the piano, and play a tune.” I departed, obeying his directions. “Enough!” he called out in a few minutes. “You play _a little_, I see; like any other English school-girl; perhaps rather better than some, but not well.” I closed the piano and returned. Mr. Rochester continued— “Adèle showed me some sketches this morning, which she said were yours. I don’t know whether they were entirely of your doing; probably a master aided you?” “No, indeed!” I interjected. “Ah! that pricks pride. Well, fetch me your portfolio, if you can vouch for its contents being original; but don’t pass your word unless you are certain: I can recognise patchwork.” “Then I will say nothing, and you shall judge for yourself, sir.” I brought the portfolio from the library. “Approach the table,” said he; and I wheeled it to his couch. Adèle and Mrs. Fairfax drew near to see the pictures. “No crowding,” said Mr. Rochester: “take the drawings from my hand as I finish with them; but don’t push your faces up to mine.” He deliberately scrutinised each sketch and painting. Three he laid aside; the others, when he had examined them, he swept from him. “Take them off to the other table, Mrs. Fairfax,” said he, “and look at them with Adèle;—you” (glancing at me) “resume your seat, and answer my questions. I perceive those pictures were done by one hand: was that hand yours?” “Yes.” “And when did you find time to do them? They have taken much time, and some thought.” “I did them in the last two vacations I spent at Lowood, when I had no other occupation.” “Where did you get your copies?” “Out of my head.” “That head I see now on your shoulders?” “Yes, sir.” “Has it other furniture of the same kind within?” “I should think it may have: I should hope—better.” He spread the pictures before him, and again surveyed them alternately. While he is so occupied, I will tell you, reader, what they are: and first, I must premise that they are nothing wonderful. The subjects had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with the spiritual eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were striking; but my hand would not second my fancy, and in each case it had wrought out but a pale portrait of the thing I had conceived. These pictures were in water-colours. The first represented clouds low and livid, rolling over a swollen sea: all the distance was in eclipse; so, too, was the foreground; or rather, the nearest billows, for there was no land. One gleam of light lifted into relief a half-submerged mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and large, with wings flecked with foam; its beak held a gold bracelet set with gems, that I had touched with as brilliant tints as my palette could yield, and as glittering distinctness as my pencil could impart. Sinking below the bird and mast, a drowned corpse glanced through the green water; a fair arm was the only limb clearly visible, whence the bracelet had been washed or torn. The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak of a hill, with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze. Beyond and above spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at twilight: rising into the sky was a woman’s shape to the bust, portrayed in tints as dusk and soft as I could combine. The dim forehead was crowned with a star; the lineaments below were seen as through the suffusion of vapour; the eyes shone dark and wild; the hair streamed shadowy, like a beamless cloud torn by storm or by electric travail. On the neck lay a pale reflection like moonlight; the same faint lustre touched the train of thin clouds from which rose and bowed this vision of the Evening Star. The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in the foreground, a head,—a colossal head, inclined towards the iceberg, and resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under the forehead, and supporting it, drew up before the lower features a sable veil; a brow quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye hollow and fixed, blank of meaning but for the glassiness of despair, alone were visible. Above the temples, amidst wreathed turban folds of black drapery, vague in its character and consistency as cloud, gleamed a ring of white flame, gemmed with sparkles of a more lurid tinge. This pale crescent was “the likeness of a kingly crown;” what it diademed was “the shape which shape had none.” “Were you happy when you painted these pictures?” asked Mr. Rochester presently. “I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in short, was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known.” “That is not saying much. Your pleasures, by your own account, have been few; but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist’s dreamland while you blent and arranged these strange tints. Did you sit at them long each day?” “I had nothing else to do, because it was the vacation, and I sat at them from morning till noon, and from noon till night: the length of the midsummer days favoured my inclination to apply.” “And you felt self-satisfied with the result of your ardent labours?” “Far from it. I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realise.” “Not quite: you have secured the shadow of your thought; but no more, probably. You had not enough of the artist’s skill and science to give it full being: yet the drawings are, for a school-girl, peculiar. As to the thoughts, they are elfish. These eyes in the Evening Star you must have seen in a dream. How could you make them look so clear, and yet not at all brilliant? for the planet above quells their rays. And what meaning is that in their solemn depth? And who taught you to paint wind? There is a high gale in that sky, and on this hill-top. Where did you see Latmos? For that is Latmos. There! put the drawings away!” I had scarce tied the strings of the portfolio, when, looking at his watch, he said abruptly— “It is nine o’clock: what are you about, Miss Eyre, to let Adèle sit up so long? Take her to bed.” Adèle went to kiss him before quitting the room: he endured the caress, but scarcely seemed to relish it more than Pilot would have done, nor so much. “I wish you all good-night, now,” said he, making a movement of the hand towards the door, in token that he was tired of our company, and wished to dismiss us. Mrs. Fairfax folded up her knitting: I took my portfolio: we curtseyed to him, received a frigid bow in return, and so withdrew. “You said Mr. Rochester was not strikingly peculiar, Mrs. Fairfax,” I observed, when I rejoined her in her room, after putting Adèle to bed. “Well, is he?” “I think so: he is very changeful and abrupt.” “True: no doubt he may appear so to a stranger, but I am so accustomed to his manner, I never think of it; and then, if he has peculiarities of temper, allowance should be made.” “Why?” “Partly because it is his nature—and we can none of us help our nature; and partly because he has painful thoughts, no doubt, to harass him, and make his spirits unequal.” “What about?” “Family troubles, for one thing.” “But he has no family.” “Not now, but he has had—or, at least, relatives. He lost his elder brother a few years since.” “His _elder_ brother?” “Yes. The present Mr. Rochester has not been very long in possession of the property; only about nine years.” “Nine years is a tolerable time. Was he so very fond of his brother as to be still inconsolable for his loss?” “Why, no—perhaps not. I believe there were some misunderstandings between them. Mr. Rowland Rochester was not quite just to Mr. Edward; and perhaps he prejudiced his father against him. The old gentleman was fond of money, and anxious to keep the family estate together. He did not like to diminish the property by division, and yet he was anxious that Mr. Edward should have wealth, too, to keep up the consequence of the name; and, soon after he was of age, some steps were taken that were not quite fair, and made a great deal of mischief. Old Mr. Rochester and Mr. Rowland combined to bring Mr. Edward into what he considered a painful position, for the sake of making his fortune: what the precise nature of that position was I never clearly knew, but his spirit could not brook what he had to suffer in it. He is not very forgiving: he broke with his family, and now for many years he has led an unsettled kind of life. I don’t think he has ever been resident at Thornfield for a fortnight together, since the death of his brother without a will left him master of the estate; and, indeed, no wonder he shuns the old place.” “Why should he shun it?” “Perhaps he thinks it gloomy.” The answer was evasive. I should have liked something clearer; but Mrs. Fairfax either could not, or would not, give me more explicit information of the origin and nature of Mr. Rochester’s trials. She averred they were a mystery to herself, and that what she knew was chiefly from conjecture. It was evident, indeed, that she wished me to drop the subject, which I did accordingly. ', 'For several subsequent days I saw little of Mr. Rochester. In the mornings he seemed much engaged with business, and, in the afternoon, gentlemen from Millcote or the neighbourhood called, and sometimes stayed to dine with him. When his sprain was well enough to admit of horse exercise, he rode out a good deal; probably to return these visits, as he generally did not come back till late at night. During this interval, even Adèle was seldom sent for to his presence, and all my acquaintance with him was confined to an occasional rencontre in the hall, on the stairs, or in the gallery, when he would sometimes pass me haughtily and coldly, just acknowledging my presence by a distant nod or a cool glance, and sometimes bow and smile with gentlemanlike affability. His changes of mood did not offend me, because I saw that I had nothing to do with their alternation; the ebb and flow depended on causes quite disconnected with me. One day he had had company to dinner, and had sent for my portfolio; in order, doubtless, to exhibit its contents: the gentlemen went away early, to attend a public meeting at Millcote, as Mrs. Fairfax informed me; but the night being wet and inclement, Mr. Rochester did not accompany them. Soon after they were gone he rang the bell: a message came that I and Adèle were to go downstairs. I brushed Adèle’s hair and made her neat, and having ascertained that I was myself in my usual Quaker trim, where there was nothing to retouch—all being too close and plain, braided locks included, to admit of disarrangement—we descended, Adèle wondering whether the _petit coffre_ was at length come; for, owing to some mistake, its arrival had hitherto been delayed. She was gratified: there it stood, a little carton, on the table when we entered the dining-room. She appeared to know it by instinct. “Ma boite! ma boite!” exclaimed she, running towards it. “Yes, there is your ‘boite’ at last: take it into a corner, you genuine daughter of Paris, and amuse yourself with disembowelling it,” said the deep and rather sarcastic voice of Mr. Rochester, proceeding from the depths of an immense easy-chair at the fireside. “And mind,” he continued, “don’t bother me with any details of the anatomical process, or any notice of the condition of the entrails: let your operation be conducted in silence: tiens-toi tranquille, enfant; comprends-tu?” Adèle seemed scarcely to need the warning; she had already retired to a sofa with her treasure, and was busy untying the cord which secured the lid. Having removed this impediment, and lifted certain silvery envelopes of tissue paper, she merely exclaimed— “Oh ciel! Que c’est beau!” and then remained absorbed in ecstatic contemplation. “Is Miss Eyre there?” now demanded the master, half rising from his seat to look round to the door, near which I still stood. “Ah! well, come forward; be seated here.” He drew a chair near his own. “I am not fond of the prattle of children,” he continued; “for, old bachelor as I am, I have no pleasant associations connected with their lisp. It would be intolerable to me to pass a whole evening _tête-à-tête_ with a brat. Don’t draw that chair farther off, Miss Eyre; sit down exactly where I placed it—if you please, that is. Confound these civilities! I continually forget them. Nor do I particularly affect simple-minded old ladies. By-the-bye, I must have mine in mind; it won’t do to neglect her; she is a Fairfax, or wed to one; and blood is said to be thicker than water.” He rang, and despatched an invitation to Mrs. Fairfax, who soon arrived, knitting-basket in hand. “Good evening, madam; I sent to you for a charitable purpose. I have forbidden Adèle to talk to me about her presents, and she is bursting with repletion; have the goodness to serve her as auditress and interlocutrice; it will be one of the most benevolent acts you ever performed.” Adèle, indeed, no sooner saw Mrs. Fairfax, than she summoned her to her sofa, and there quickly filled her lap with the porcelain, the ivory, the waxen contents of her “boite;” pouring out, meantime, explanations and raptures in such broken English as she was mistress of. “Now I have performed the part of a good host,” pursued Mr. Rochester, “put my guests into the way of amusing each other, I ought to be at liberty to attend to my own pleasure. Miss Eyre, draw your chair still a little farther forward: you are yet too far back; I cannot see you without disturbing my position in this comfortable chair, which I have no mind to do.” I did as I was bid, though I would much rather have remained somewhat in the shade; but Mr. Rochester had such a direct way of giving orders, it seemed a matter of course to obey him promptly. We were, as I have said, in the dining-room: the lustre, which had been lit for dinner, filled the room with a festal breadth of light; the large fire was all red and clear; the purple curtains hung rich and ample before the lofty window and loftier arch; everything was still, save the subdued chat of Adèle (she dared not speak loud), and, filling up each pause, the beating of winter rain against the panes. Mr. Rochester, as he sat in his damask-covered chair, looked different to what I had seen him look before; not quite so stern—much less gloomy. There was a smile on his lips, and his eyes sparkled, whether with wine or not, I am not sure; but I think it very probable. He was, in short, in his after-dinner mood; more expanded and genial, and also more self-indulgent than the frigid and rigid temper of the morning; still he looked preciously grim, cushioning his massive head against the swelling back of his chair, and receiving the light of the fire on his granite-hewn features, and in his great, dark eyes; for he had great, dark eyes, and very fine eyes, too—not without a certain change in their depths sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you, at least, of that feeling. He had been looking two minutes at the fire, and I had been looking the same length of time at him, when, turning suddenly, he caught my gaze fastened on his physiognomy. “You examine me, Miss Eyre,” said he: “do you think me handsome?” I should, if I had deliberated, have replied to this question by something conventionally vague and polite; but the answer somehow slipped from my tongue before I was aware—“No, sir.” “Ah! By my word! there is something singular about you,” said he: “you have the air of a little _nonnette_; quaint, quiet, grave, and simple, as you sit with your hands before you, and your eyes generally bent on the carpet (except, by-the-bye, when they are directed piercingly to my face; as just now, for instance); and when one asks you a question, or makes a remark to which you are obliged to reply, you rap out a round rejoinder, which, if not blunt, is at least brusque. What do you mean by it?” “Sir, I was too plain; I beg your pardon. I ought to have replied that it was not easy to give an impromptu answer to a question about appearances; that tastes mostly differ; and that beauty is of little consequence, or something of that sort.” “You ought to have replied no such thing. Beauty of little consequence, indeed! And so, under pretence of softening the previous outrage, of stroking and soothing me into placidity, you stick a sly penknife under my ear! Go on: what fault do you find with me, pray? I suppose I have all my limbs and all my features like any other man?” “Mr. Rochester, allow me to disown my first answer: I intended no pointed repartee: it was only a blunder.” “Just so: I think so: and you shall be answerable for it. Criticise me: does my forehead not please you?” He lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over his brow, and showed a solid enough mass of intellectual organs, but an abrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should have risen. “Now, ma’am, am I a fool?” “Far from it, sir. You would, perhaps, think me rude if I inquired in return whether you are a philanthropist?” “There again! Another stick of the penknife, when she pretended to pat my head: and that is because I said I did not like the society of children and old women (low be it spoken!). No, young lady, I am not a general philanthropist; but I bear a conscience;” and he pointed to the prominences which are said to indicate that faculty, and which, fortunately for him, were sufficiently conspicuous; giving, indeed, a marked breadth to the upper part of his head: “and, besides, I once had a kind of rude tenderness of heart. When I was as old as you, I was a feeling fellow enough; partial to the unfledged, unfostered, and unlucky; but Fortune has knocked me about since: she has even kneaded me with her knuckles, and now I flatter myself I am hard and tough as an India-rubber ball; pervious, though, through a chink or two still, and with one sentient point in the middle of the lump. Yes: does that leave hope for me?” “Hope of what, sir?” “Of my final re-transformation from India-rubber back to flesh?” “Decidedly he has had too much wine,” I thought; and I did not know what answer to make to his queer question: how could I tell whether he was capable of being re-transformed? “You looked very much puzzled, Miss Eyre; and though you are not pretty any more than I am handsome, yet a puzzled air becomes you; besides, it is convenient, for it keeps those searching eyes of yours away from my physiognomy, and busies them with the worsted flowers of the rug; so puzzle on. Young lady, I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night.” With this announcement he rose from his chair, and stood, leaning his arm on the marble mantelpiece: in that attitude his shape was seen plainly as well as his face; his unusual breadth of chest, disproportionate almost to his length of limb. I am sure most people would have thought him an ugly man; yet there was so much unconscious pride in his port; so much ease in his demeanour; such a look of complete indifference to his own external appearance; so haughty a reliance on the power of other qualities, intrinsic or adventitious, to atone for the lack of mere personal attractiveness, that, in looking at him, one inevitably shared the indifference, and, even in a blind, imperfect sense, put faith in the confidence. “I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night,” he repeated, “and that is why I sent for you: the fire and the chandelier were not sufficient company for me; nor would Pilot have been, for none of these can talk. Adèle is a degree better, but still far below the mark; Mrs. Fairfax ditto; you, I am persuaded, can suit me if you will: you puzzled me the first evening I invited you down here. I have almost forgotten you since: other ideas have driven yours from my head; but to-night I am resolved to be at ease; to dismiss what importunes, and recall what pleases. It would please me now to draw you out—to learn more of you—therefore speak.” Instead of speaking, I smiled; and not a very complacent or submissive smile either. “Speak,” he urged. “What about, sir?” “Whatever you like. I leave both the choice of subject and the manner of treating it entirely to yourself.” Accordingly I sat and said nothing: “If he expects me to talk for the mere sake of talking and showing off, he will find he has addressed himself to the wrong person,” I thought. “You are dumb, Miss Eyre.” I was dumb still. He bent his head a little towards me, and with a single hasty glance seemed to dive into my eyes. “Stubborn?” he said, “and annoyed. Ah! it is consistent. I put my request in an absurd, almost insolent form. Miss Eyre, I beg your pardon. The fact is, once for all, I don’t wish to treat you like an inferior: that is” (correcting himself), “I claim only such superiority as must result from twenty years’ difference in age and a century’s advance in experience. This is legitimate, _et j’y tiens_, as Adèle would say; and it is by virtue of this superiority, and this alone, that I desire you to have the goodness to talk to me a little now, and divert my thoughts, which are galled with dwelling on one point—cankering as a rusty nail.” He had deigned an explanation, almost an apology, and I did not feel insensible to his condescension, and would not seem so. “I am willing to amuse you, if I can, sir—quite willing; but I cannot introduce a topic, because how do I know what will interest you? Ask me questions, and I will do my best to answer them.” “Then, in the first place, do you agree with me that I have a right to be a little masterful, abrupt, perhaps exacting, sometimes, on the grounds I stated, namely, that I am old enough to be your father, and that I have battled through a varied experience with many men of many nations, and roamed over half the globe, while you have lived quietly with one set of people in one house?” “Do as you please, sir.” “That is no answer; or rather it is a very irritating, because a very evasive one. Reply clearly.” “I don’t think, sir, you have a right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.” “Humph! Promptly spoken. But I won’t allow that, seeing that it would never suit my case, as I have made an indifferent, not to say a bad, use of both advantages. Leaving superiority out of the question, then, you must still agree to receive my orders now and then, without being piqued or hurt by the tone of command. Will you?” I smiled: I thought to myself Mr. Rochester _is_ peculiar—he seems to forget that he pays me £30 per annum for receiving his orders. “The smile is very well,” said he, catching instantly the passing expression; “but speak too.” “I was thinking, sir, that very few masters would trouble themselves to inquire whether or not their paid subordinates were piqued and hurt by their orders.” “Paid subordinates! What! you are my paid subordinate, are you? Oh yes, I had forgotten the salary! Well then, on that mercenary ground, will you agree to let me hector a little?” “No, sir, not on that ground; but, on the ground that you did forget it, and that you care whether or not a dependent is comfortable in his dependency, I agree heartily.” “And will you consent to dispense with a great many conventional forms and phrases, without thinking that the omission arises from insolence?” “I am sure, sir, I should never mistake informality for insolence: one I rather like, the other nothing free-born would submit to, even for a salary.” “Humbug! Most things free-born will submit to anything for a salary; therefore, keep to yourself, and don’t venture on generalities of which you are intensely ignorant. However, I mentally shake hands with you for your answer, despite its inaccuracy; and as much for the manner in which it was said, as for the substance of the speech; the manner was frank and sincere; one does not often see such a manner: no, on the contrary, affectation, or coldness, or stupid, coarse-minded misapprehension of one’s meaning are the usual rewards of candour. Not three in three thousand raw school-girl-governesses would have answered me as you have just done. But I don’t mean to flatter you: if you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it. And then, after all, I go too fast in my conclusions: for what I yet know, you may be no better than the rest; you may have intolerable defects to counterbalance your few good points.” “And so may you,” I thought. My eye met his as the idea crossed my mind: he seemed to read the glance, answering as if its import had been spoken as well as imagined— “Yes, yes, you are right,” said he; “I have plenty of faults of my own: I know it, and I don’t wish to palliate them, I assure you. God wot I need not be too severe about others; I have a past existence, a series of deeds, a colour of life to contemplate within my own breast, which might well call my sneers and censures from my neighbours to myself. I started, or rather (for like other defaulters, I like to lay half the blame on ill fortune and adverse circumstances) was thrust on to a wrong tack at the age of one-and-twenty, and have never recovered the right course since: but I might have been very different; I might have been as good as you—wiser—almost as stainless. I envy you your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure—an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?” “How was your memory when you were eighteen, sir?” “All right then; limpid, salubrious: no gush of bilge water had turned it to fetid puddle. I was your equal at eighteen—quite your equal. Nature meant me to be, on the whole, a good man, Miss Eyre; one of the better kind, and you see I am not so. You would say you don’t see it; at least I flatter myself I read as much in your eye (beware, by-the-bye, what you express with that organ; I am quick at interpreting its language). Then take my word for it,—I am not a villain: you are not to suppose that—not to attribute to me any such bad eminence; but, owing, I verily believe, rather to circumstances than to my natural bent, I am a trite commonplace sinner, hackneyed in all the poor petty dissipations with which the rich and worthless try to put on life. Do you wonder that I avow this to you? Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances’ secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations.” “How do you know?—how can you guess all this, sir?” “I know it well; therefore I proceed almost as freely as if I were writing my thoughts in a diary. You would say, I should have been superior to circumstances; so I should—so I should; but you see I was not. When fate wronged me, I had not the wisdom to remain cool: I turned desperate; then I degenerated. Now, when any vicious simpleton excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry, I cannot flatter myself that I am better than he: I am forced to confess that he and I are on a level. I wish I had stood firm—God knows I do! Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.” “Repentance is said to be its cure, sir.” “It is not its cure. Reformation may be its cure; and I could reform—I have strength yet for that—if—but where is the use of thinking of it, hampered, burdened, cursed as I am? Besides, since happiness is irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and I _will_ get it, cost what it may.” “Then you will degenerate still more, sir.” “Possibly: yet why should I, if I can get sweet, fresh pleasure? And I may get it as sweet and fresh as the wild honey the bee gathers on the moor.” “It will sting—it will taste bitter, sir.” “How do you know?—you never tried it. How very serious—how very solemn you look: and you are as ignorant of the matter as this cameo head” (taking one from the mantelpiece). “You have no right to preach to me, you neophyte, that have not passed the porch of life, and are absolutely unacquainted with its mysteries.” “I only remind you of your own words, sir: you said error brought remorse, and you pronounced remorse the poison of existence.” “And who talks of error now? I scarcely think the notion that flittered across my brain was an error. I believe it was an inspiration rather than a temptation: it was very genial, very soothing—I know that. Here it comes again! It is no devil, I assure you; or if it be, it has put on the robes of an angel of light. I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart.” “Distrust it, sir; it is not a true angel.” “Once more, how do you know? By what instinct do you pretend to distinguish between a fallen seraph of the abyss and a messenger from the eternal throne—between a guide and a seducer?” “I judged by your countenance, sir, which was troubled when you said the suggestion had returned upon you. I feel sure it will work you more misery if you listen to it.” “Not at all—it bears the most gracious message in the world: for the rest, you are not my conscience-keeper, so don’t make yourself uneasy. Here, come in, bonny wanderer!” He said this as if he spoke to a vision, viewless to any eye but his own; then, folding his arms, which he had half extended, on his chest, he seemed to enclose in their embrace the invisible being. “Now,” he continued, again addressing me, “I have received the pilgrim—a disguised deity, as I verily believe. Already it has done me good: my heart was a sort of charnel; it will now be a shrine.” “To speak truth, sir, I don’t understand you at all: I cannot keep up the conversation, because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing, I know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that you regretted your own imperfection;—one thing I can comprehend: you intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane. It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure.” “Justly thought; rightly said, Miss Eyre; and, at this moment, I am paving hell with energy.” “Sir?” “I am laying down good intentions, which I believe durable as flint. Certainly, my associates and pursuits shall be other than they have been.” “And better?” “And better—so much better as pure ore is than foul dross. You seem to doubt me; I don’t doubt myself: I know what my aim is, what my motives are; and at this moment I pass a law, unalterable as that of the Medes and Persians, that both are right.” “They cannot be, sir, if they require a new statute to legalise them.” “They are, Miss Eyre, though they absolutely require a new statute: unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules.” “That sounds a dangerous maxim, sir; because one can see at once that it is liable to abuse.” “Sententious sage! so it is: but I swear by my household gods not to abuse it.” “You are human and fallible.” “I am: so are you—what then?” “The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.” “What power?” “That of saying of any strange, unsanctioned line of action,—‘Let it be right.’” “‘Let it be right’—the very words: you have pronounced them.” “_May_ it be right then,” I said, as I rose, deeming it useless to continue a discourse which was all darkness to me; and, besides, sensible that the character of my interlocutor was beyond my penetration; at least, beyond its present reach; and feeling the uncertainty, the vague sense of insecurity, which accompanies a conviction of ignorance. “Where are you going?” “To put Adèle to bed: it is past her bedtime.” “You are afraid of me, because I talk like a Sphynx.” “Your language is enigmatical, sir: but though I am bewildered, I am certainly not afraid.” “You _are_ afraid—your self-love dreads a blunder.” “In that sense I do feel apprehensive—I have no wish to talk nonsense.” “If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should mistake it for sense. Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre? Don’t trouble yourself to answer—I see you laugh rarely; but you can laugh very merrily: believe me, you are not naturally austere, any more than I am naturally vicious. The Lowood constraint still clings to you somewhat; controlling your features, muffling your voice, and restricting your limbs; and you fear in the presence of a man and a brother—or father, or master, or what you will—to smile too gaily, speak too freely, or move too quickly: but, in time, I think you will learn to be natural with me, as I find it impossible to be conventional with you; and then your looks and movements will have more vivacity and variety than they dare offer now. I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high. You are still bent on going?” “It has struck nine, sir.” “Never mind,—wait a minute: Adèle is not ready to go to bed yet. My position, Miss Eyre, with my back to the fire, and my face to the room, favours observation. While talking to you, I have also occasionally watched Adèle (I have my own reasons for thinking her a curious study,—reasons that I may, nay, that I shall, impart to you some day). She pulled out of her box, about ten minutes ago, a little pink silk frock; rapture lit her face as she unfolded it; coquetry runs in her blood, blends with her brains, and seasons the marrow of her bones. ‘Il faut que je l’essaie!’ cried she, ‘et à l’instant même!’ and she rushed out of the room. She is now with Sophie, undergoing a robing process: in a few minutes she will re-enter; and I know what I shall see,—a miniature of Céline Varens, as she used to appear on the boards at the rising of—But never mind that. However, my tenderest feelings are about to receive a shock: such is my presentiment; stay now, to see whether it will be realised.” Ere long, Adèle’s little foot was heard tripping across the hall. She entered, transformed as her guardian had predicted. A dress of rose-coloured satin, very short, and as full in the skirt as it could be gathered, replaced the brown frock she had previously worn; a wreath of rosebuds circled her forehead; her feet were dressed in silk stockings and small white satin sandals. “Est-ce que ma robe va bien?” cried she, bounding forwards; “et mes souliers? et mes bas? Tenez, je crois que je vais danser!” And spreading out her dress, she chasséed across the room till, having reached Mr. Rochester, she wheeled lightly round before him on tip-toe, then dropped on one knee at his feet, exclaiming— “Monsieur, je vous remercie mille fois de votre bonté;” then rising, she added, “C’est comme cela que maman faisait, n’est-ce pas, monsieur?” “Pre-cise-ly!” was the answer; “and, ‘comme cela,’ she charmed my English gold out of my British breeches’ pocket. I have been green, too, Miss Eyre,—ay, grass green: not a more vernal tint freshens you now than once freshened me. My Spring is gone, however, but it has left me that French floweret on my hands, which, in some moods, I would fain be rid of. Not valuing now the root whence it sprang; having found that it was of a sort which nothing but gold dust could manure, I have but half a liking to the blossom, especially when it looks so artificial as just now. I keep it and rear it rather on the Roman Catholic principle of expiating numerous sins, great or small, by one good work. I’ll explain all this some day. Good-night.” ', 'Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it. It was one afternoon, when he chanced to meet me and Adèle in the grounds: and while she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked me to walk up and down a long beech avenue within sight of her. He then said that she was the daughter of a French opera-dancer, Céline Varens, towards whom he had once cherished what he called a “_grande passion_.” This passion Céline had professed to return with even superior ardour. He thought himself her idol, ugly as he was: he believed, as he said, that she preferred his “_taille d’athlète_” to the elegance of the Apollo Belvidere. “And, Miss Eyre, so much was I flattered by this preference of the Gallic sylph for her British gnome, that I installed her in an hotel; gave her a complete establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmeres, diamonds, dentelles, &c. In short, I began the process of ruining myself in the received style, like any other spoony. I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre. I had—as I deserved to have—the fate of all other spoonies. Happening to call one evening when Céline did not expect me, I found her out; but it was a warm night, and I was tired with strolling through Paris, so I sat down in her boudoir; happy to breathe the air consecrated so lately by her presence. No,—I exaggerate; I never thought there was any consecrating virtue about her: it was rather a sort of pastille perfume she had left; a scent of musk and amber, than an odour of sanctity. I was just beginning to stifle with the fumes of conservatory flowers and sprinkled essences, when I bethought myself to open the window and step out on to the balcony. It was moonlight and gaslight besides, and very still and serene. The balcony was furnished with a chair or two; I sat down, and took out a cigar,—I will take one now, if you will excuse me.” Here ensued a pause, filled up by the producing and lighting of a cigar; having placed it to his lips and breathed a trail of Havannah incense on the freezing and sunless air, he went on— “I liked bonbons too in those days, Miss Eyre, and I was _croquant_—(overlook the barbarism)—_croquant_ chocolate comfits, and smoking alternately, watching meantime the equipages that rolled along the fashionable streets towards the neighbouring opera-house, when in an elegant close carriage drawn by a beautiful pair of English horses, and distinctly seen in the brilliant city-night, I recognised the ‘voiture’ I had given Céline. She was returning: of course my heart thumped with impatience against the iron rails I leant upon. The carriage stopped, as I had expected, at the hotel door; my flame (that is the very word for an opera inamorata) alighted: though muffed in a cloak—an unnecessary encumbrance, by-the-bye, on so warm a June evening—I knew her instantly by her little foot, seen peeping from the skirt of her dress, as she skipped from the carriage-step. Bending over the balcony, I was about to murmur ‘Mon ange’—in a tone, of course, which should be audible to the ear of love alone—when a figure jumped from the carriage after her; cloaked also; but that was a spurred heel which had rung on the pavement, and that was a hatted head which now passed under the arched _porte cochère_ of the hotel. “You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it. You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I tell you—and you may mark my words—you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life’s stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current—as I am now. “I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost. I like Thornfield, its antiquity, its retirement, its old crow-trees and thorn-trees, its grey façade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin: and yet how long have I abhorred the very thought of it, shunned it like a great plague-house? How I do still abhor—” He ground his teeth and was silent: he arrested his step and struck his boot against the hard ground. Some hated thought seemed to have him in its grip, and to hold him so tightly that he could not advance. We were ascending the avenue when he thus paused; the hall was before us. Lifting his eye to its battlements, he cast over them a glare such as I never saw before or since. Pain, shame, ire, impatience, disgust, detestation, seemed momentarily to hold a quivering conflict in the large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow. Wild was the wrestle which should be paramount; but another feeling rose and triumphed: something hard and cynical: self-willed and resolute: it settled his passion and petrified his countenance: he went on— “During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point with my destiny. She stood there, by that beech-trunk—a hag like one of those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres. ‘You like Thornfield?’ she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows, ‘Like it if you can! Like it if you dare!’ “‘I will like it,’ said I; ‘I dare like it;’ and” (he subjoined moodily) “I will keep my word; I will break obstacles to happiness, to goodness—yes, goodness. I wish to be a better man than I have been, than I am; as Job’s leviathan broke the spear, the dart, and the habergeon, hindrances which others count as iron and brass, I will esteem but straw and rotten wood.” Adèle here ran before him with her shuttlecock. “Away!” he cried harshly; “keep at a distance, child; or go in to Sophie!” Continuing then to pursue his walk in silence, I ventured to recall him to the point whence he had abruptly diverged— “Did you leave the balcony, sir,” I asked, “when Mdlle. Varens entered?” I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question, but, on the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. “Oh, I had forgotten Céline! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony, glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my heart’s core. Strange!” he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the point. “Strange that I should choose you for the confidant of all this, young lady; passing strange that you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you! But the last singularity explains the first, as I intimated once before: you, with your gravity, considerateness, and caution were made to be the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what sort of a mind I have placed in communication with my own: I know it is one not liable to take infection: it is a peculiar mind: it is a unique one. Happily I do not mean to harm it: but, if I did, it would not take harm from me. The more you and I converse, the better; for while I cannot blight you, you may refresh me.” After this digression he proceeded— “I remained in the balcony. ‘They will come to her boudoir, no doubt,’ thought I: ‘let me prepare an ambush.’ So putting my hand in through the open window, I drew the curtain over it, leaving only an opening through which I could take observations; then I closed the casement, all but a chink just wide enough to furnish an outlet to lovers’ whispered vows: then I stole back to my chair; and as I resumed it the pair came in. My eye was quickly at the aperture. Céline’s chamber-maid entered, lit a lamp, left it on the table, and withdrew. The couple were thus revealed to me clearly: both removed their cloaks, and there was ‘the Varens,’ shining in satin and jewels,—my gifts of course,—and there was her companion in an officer’s uniform; and I knew him for a young roué of a vicomte—a brainless and vicious youth whom I had sometimes met in society, and had never thought of hating because I despised him so absolutely. On recognising him, the fang of the snake Jealousy was instantly broken; because at the same moment my love for Céline sank under an extinguisher. A woman who could betray me for such a rival was not worth contending for; she deserved only scorn; less, however, than I, who had been her dupe. “They began to talk; their conversation eased me completely: frivolous, mercenary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather calculated to weary than enrage a listener. A card of mine lay on the table; this being perceived, brought my name under discussion. Neither of them possessed energy or wit to belabour me soundly, but they insulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way: especially Céline, who even waxed rather brilliant on my personal defects—deformities she termed them. Now it had been her custom to launch out into fervent admiration of what she called my ‘_beauté mâle_:’ wherein she differed diametrically from you, who told me point-blank, at the second interview, that you did not think me handsome. The contrast struck me at the time and—” Adèle here came running up again. “Monsieur, John has just been to say that your agent has called and wishes to see you.” “Ah! in that case I must abridge. Opening the window, I walked in upon them; liberated Céline from my protection; gave her notice to vacate her hotel; offered her a purse for immediate exigencies; disregarded screams, hysterics, prayers, protestations, convulsions; made an appointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois de Boulogne. Next morning I had the pleasure of encountering him; left a bullet in one of his poor etiolated arms, feeble as the wing of a chicken in the pip, and then thought I had done with the whole crew. But unluckily the Varens, six months before, had given me this filette Adèle, who, she affirmed, was my daughter; and perhaps she may be, though I see no proofs of such grim paternity written in her countenance: Pilot is more like me than she. Some years after I had broken with the mother, she abandoned her child, and ran away to Italy with a musician or singer. I acknowledged no natural claim on Adèle’s part to be supported by me, nor do I now acknowledge any, for I am not her father; but hearing that she was quite destitute, I e’en took the poor thing out of the slime and mud of Paris, and transplanted it here, to grow up clean in the wholesome soil of an English country garden. Mrs. Fairfax found you to train it; but now you know that it is the illegitimate offspring of a French opera-girl, you will perhaps think differently of your post and protégée: you will be coming to me some day with notice that you have found another place—that you beg me to look out for a new governess, &c.—Eh?” “No: Adèle is not answerable for either her mother’s faults or yours: I have a regard for her; and now that I know she is, in a sense, parentless—forsaken by her mother and disowned by you, sir—I shall cling closer to her than before. How could I possibly prefer the spoilt pet of a wealthy family, who would hate her governess as a nuisance, to a lonely little orphan, who leans towards her as a friend?” “Oh, that is the light in which you view it! Well, I must go in now; and you too: it darkens.” But I stayed out a few minutes longer with Adèle and Pilot—ran a race with her, and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock. When we went in, and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took her on my knee; kept her there an hour, allowing her to prattle as she liked: not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to stray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a superficiality of character, inherited probably from her mother, hardly congenial to an English mind. Still she had her merits; and I was disposed to appreciate all that was good in her to the utmost. I sought in her countenance and features a likeness to Mr. Rochester, but found none: no trait, no turn of expression announced relationship. It was a pity: if she could but have been proved to resemble him, he would have thought more of her. It was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for the night, that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr. Rochester had told me. As he had said, there was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance of the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman’s passion for a French dancer, and her treachery to him, were every-day matters enough, no doubt, in society; but there was something decidedly strange in the paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized him when he was in the act of expressing the present contentment of his mood, and his newly revived pleasure in the old hall and its environs. I meditated wonderingly on this incident; but gradually quitting it, as I found it for the present inexplicable, I turned to the consideration of my master’s manner to myself. The confidence he had thought fit to repose in me seemed a tribute to my discretion: I regarded and accepted it as such. His deportment had now for some weeks been more uniform towards me than at the first. I never seemed in his way; he did not take fits of chilling hauteur: when he met me unexpectedly, the encounter seemed welcome; he had always a word and sometimes a smile for me: when summoned by formal invitation to his presence, I was honoured by a cordiality of reception that made me feel I really possessed the power to amuse him, and that these evening conferences were sought as much for his pleasure as for my benefit. I, indeed, talked comparatively little, but I heard him talk with relish. It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to open to a mind unacquainted with the world glimpses of its scenes and ways (I do not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their interest from the great scale on which they were acted, the strange novelty by which they were characterised); and I had a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he portrayed, and following him in thought through the new regions he disclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion. The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint: the friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to him. I felt at times as if he were my relation rather than my master: yet he was imperious sometimes still; but I did not mind that; I saw it was his way. So happy, so gratified did I become with this new interest added to life, that I ceased to pine after kindred: my thin crescent-destiny seemed to enlarge; the blanks of existence were filled up; my bodily health improved; I gathered flesh and strength. And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader: gratitude, and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could not, for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description: in my secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many others. He was moody, too; unaccountably so; I more than once, when sent for to read to him, found him sitting in his library alone, with his head bent on his folded arms; and, when he looked up, a morose, almost a malignant, scowl blackened his features. But I believed that his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say _former_, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their source in some cruel cross of fate. I believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies, higher principles, and purer tastes than such as circumstances had developed, education instilled, or destiny encouraged. I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for the present they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot deny that I grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have given much to assuage it. Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed, I could not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in the avenue, and told how his destiny had risen up before him, and dared him to be happy at Thornfield. “Why not?” I asked myself. “What alienates him from the house? Will he leave it again soon? Mrs. Fairfax said he seldom stayed here longer than a fortnight at a time; and he has now been resident eight weeks. If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!” I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing; at any rate, I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and lugubrious, which sounded, I thought, just above me. I wished I had kept my candle burning: the night was drearily dark; my spirits were depressed. I rose and sat up in bed, listening. The sound was hushed. I tried again to sleep; but my heart beat anxiously: my inward tranquillity was broken. The clock, far down in the hall, struck two. Just then it seemed my chamber-door was touched; as if fingers had swept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside. I said, “Who is there?” Nothing answered. I was chilled with fear. All at once I remembered that it might be Pilot, who, when the kitchen-door chanced to be left open, not unfrequently found his way up to the threshold of Mr. Rochester’s chamber: I had seen him lying there myself in the mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat: I lay down. Silence composes the nerves; and as an unbroken hush now reigned again through the whole house, I began to feel the return of slumber. But it was not fated that I should sleep that night. A dream had scarcely approached my ear, when it fled affrighted, scared by a marrow-freezing incident enough. This was a demoniac laugh—low, suppressed, and deep—uttered, as it seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door. The head of my bed was near the door, and I thought at first the goblin-laugher stood at my bedside—or rather, crouched by my pillow: but I rose, looked round, and could see nothing; while, as I still gazed, the unnatural sound was reiterated: and I knew it came from behind the panels. My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt; my next, again to cry out, “Who is there?” Something gurgled and moaned. Ere long, steps retreated up the gallery towards the third-storey staircase: a door had lately been made to shut in that staircase; I heard it open and close, and all was still. “Was that Grace Poole? and is she possessed with a devil?” thought I. Impossible now to remain longer by myself: I must go to Mrs. Fairfax. I hurried on my frock and a shawl; I withdrew the bolt and opened the door with a trembling hand. There was a candle burning just outside, and on the matting in the gallery. I was surprised at this circumstance: but still more was I amazed to perceive the air quite dim, as if filled with smoke; and, while looking to the right hand and left, to find whence these blue wreaths issued, I became further aware of a strong smell of burning. Something creaked: it was a door ajar; and that door was Mr. Rochester’s, and the smoke rushed in a cloud from thence. I thought no more of Mrs. Fairfax; I thought no more of Grace Poole, or the laugh: in an instant, I was within the chamber. Tongues of flame darted round the bed: the curtains were on fire. In the midst of blaze and vapour, Mr. Rochester lay stretched motionless, in deep sleep. “Wake! wake!” I cried. I shook him, but he only murmured and turned: the smoke had stupefied him. Not a moment could be lost: the very sheets were kindling, I rushed to his basin and ewer; fortunately, one was wide and the other deep, and both were filled with water. I heaved them up, deluged the bed and its occupant, flew back to my own room, brought my own water-jug, baptized the couch afresh, and, by God’s aid, succeeded in extinguishing the flames which were devouring it. The hiss of the quenched element, the breakage of a pitcher which I flung from my hand when I had emptied it, and, above all, the splash of the shower-bath I had liberally bestowed, roused Mr. Rochester at last. Though it was now dark, I knew he was awake; because I heard him fulminating strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of water. “Is there a flood?” he cried. “No, sir,” I answered; “but there has been a fire: get up, do; you are quenched now; I will fetch you a candle.” “In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?” he demanded. “What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the room besides you? Have you plotted to drown me?” “I will fetch you a candle, sir; and, in Heaven’s name, get up. Somebody has plotted something: you cannot too soon find out who and what it is.” “There! I am up now; but at your peril you fetch a candle yet: wait two minutes till I get into some dry garments, if any dry there be—yes, here is my dressing-gown. Now run!” I did run; I brought the candle which still remained in the gallery. He took it from my hand, held it up, and surveyed the bed, all blackened and scorched, the sheets drenched, the carpet round swimming in water. “What is it? and who did it?” he asked. I briefly related to him what had transpired: the strange laugh I had heard in the gallery: the step ascending to the third storey; the smoke,—the smell of fire which had conducted me to his room; in what state I had found matters there, and how I had deluged him with all the water I could lay hands on. “What is it and who did it?” he asked He listened very gravely; his face, as I went on, expressed more concern than astonishment; he did not immediately speak when I had concluded. “Shall I call Mrs. Fairfax?” I asked. “Mrs. Fairfax? No; what the deuce would you call her for? What can she do? Let her sleep unmolested.” “Then I will fetch Leah, and wake John and his wife.” “Not at all: just be still. You have a shawl on. If you are not warm enough, you may take my cloak yonder; wrap it about you, and sit down in the arm-chair: there,—I will put it on. Now place your feet on the stool, to keep them out of the wet. I am going to leave you a few minutes. I shall take the candle. Remain where you are till I return; be as still as a mouse. I must pay a visit to the second storey. Don’t move, remember, or call any one.” He went: I watched the light withdraw. He passed up the gallery very softly, unclosed the staircase door with as little noise as possible, shut it after him, and the last ray vanished. I was left in total darkness. I listened for some noise, but heard nothing. A very long time elapsed. I grew weary: it was cold, in spite of the cloak; and then I did not see the use of staying, as I was not to rouse the house. I was on the point of risking Mr. Rochester’s displeasure by disobeying his orders, when the light once more gleamed dimly on the gallery wall, and I heard his unshod feet tread the matting. “I hope it is he,” thought I, “and not something worse.” He re-entered, pale and very gloomy. “I have found it all out,” said he, setting his candle down on the washstand; “it is as I thought.” “How, sir?” He made no reply, but stood with his arms folded, looking on the ground. At the end of a few minutes he inquired in rather a peculiar tone— “I forget whether you said you saw anything when you opened your chamber door.” “No, sir, only the candlestick on the ground.” “But you heard an odd laugh? You have heard that laugh before, I should think, or something like it?” “Yes, sir: there is a woman who sews here, called Grace Poole,—she laughs in that way. She is a singular person.” “Just so. Grace Poole—you have guessed it. She is, as you say, singular—very. Well, I shall reflect on the subject. Meantime, I am glad that you are the only person, besides myself, acquainted with the precise details of to-night’s incident. You are no talking fool: say nothing about it. I will account for this state of affairs” (pointing to the bed): “and now return to your own room. I shall do very well on the sofa in the library for the rest of the night. It is near four:—in two hours the servants will be up.” “Good-night, then, sir,” said I, departing. He seemed surprised—very inconsistently so, as he had just told me to go. “What!” he exclaimed, “are you quitting me already, and in that way?” “You said I might go, sir.” “But not without taking leave; not without a word or two of acknowledgment and good-will: not, in short, in that brief, dry fashion. Why, you have saved my life!—snatched me from a horrible and excruciating death! and you walk past me as if we were mutual strangers! At least shake hands.” He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, then in both his own. “You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation: but you: it is different;—I feel your benefits no burden, Jane.” He paused; gazed at me: words almost visible trembled on his lips,—but his voice was checked. “Good-night again, sir. There is no debt, benefit, burden, obligation, in the case.” “I knew,” he continued, “you would do me good in some way, at some time;—I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not”—(again he stopped)—“did not” (he proceeded hastily) “strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good-night!” Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look. “I am glad I happened to be awake,” I said: and then I was going. “What! you _will_ go?” “I am cold, sir.” “Cold? Yes,—and standing in a pool! Go, then, Jane; go!” But he still retained my hand, and I could not free it. I bethought myself of an expedient. “I think I hear Mrs. Fairfax move, sir,” said I. “Well, leave me:” he relaxed his fingers, and I was gone. I regained my couch, but never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a freshening gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards the bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy—a counteracting breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist delirium: judgment would warn passion. Too feverish to rest, I rose as soon as day dawned. ', 'I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night: I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye. During the early part of the morning, I momentarily expected his coming; he was not in the frequent habit of entering the schoolroom, but he did step in for a few minutes sometimes, and I had the impression that he was sure to visit it that day. But the morning passed just as usual: nothing happened to interrupt the quiet course of Adèle’s studies; only soon after breakfast, I heard some bustle in the neighbourhood of Mr. Rochester’s chamber, Mrs. Fairfax’s voice, and Leah’s, and the cook’s—that is, John’s wife—and even John’s own gruff tones. There were exclamations of “What a mercy master was not burnt in his bed!” “It is always dangerous to keep a candle lit at night.” “How providential that he had presence of mind to think of the water-jug!” “I wonder he waked nobody!” “It is to be hoped he will not take cold with sleeping on the library sofa,” &c. To much confabulation succeeded a sound of scrubbing and setting to rights; and when I passed the room, in going downstairs to dinner, I saw through the open door that all was again restored to complete order; only the bed was stripped of its hangings. Leah stood up in the window-seat, rubbing the panes of glass dimmed with smoke. I was about to address her, for I wished to know what account had been given of the affair: but, on advancing, I saw a second person in the chamber—a woman sitting on a chair by the bedside, and sewing rings to new curtains. That woman was no other than Grace Poole. There she sat, staid and taciturn-looking, as usual, in her brown stuff gown, her check apron, white handkerchief, and cap. She was intent on her work, in which her whole thoughts seemed absorbed: on her hard forehead, and in her commonplace features, was nothing either of the paleness or desperation one would have expected to see marking the countenance of a woman who had attempted murder, and whose intended victim had followed her last night to her lair, and (as I believed), charged her with the crime she wished to perpetrate. I was amazed—confounded. She looked up, while I still gazed at her: no start, no increase or failure of colour betrayed emotion, consciousness of guilt, or fear of detection. She said “Good morning, Miss,” in her usual phlegmatic and brief manner; and taking up another ring and more tape, went on with her sewing. “I will put her to some test,” thought I: “such absolute impenetrability is past comprehension.” “Good morning, Grace,” I said. “Has anything happened here? I thought I heard the servants all talking together a while ago.” “Only master had been reading in his bed last night; he fell asleep with his candle lit, and the curtains got on fire; but, fortunately, he awoke before the bed-clothes or the wood-work caught, and contrived to quench the flames with the water in the ewer.” “A strange affair!” I said, in a low voice: then, looking at her fixedly—“Did Mr. Rochester wake nobody? Did no one hear him move?” She again raised her eyes to me, and this time there was something of consciousness in their expression. She seemed to examine me warily; then she answered— “The servants sleep so far off, you know, Miss, they would not be likely to hear. Mrs. Fairfax’s room and yours are the nearest to master’s; but Mrs. Fairfax said she heard nothing: when people get elderly, they often sleep heavy.” She paused, and then added, with a sort of assumed indifference, but still in a marked and significant tone—“But you are young, Miss; and I should say a light sleeper: perhaps you may have heard a noise?” “I did,” said I, dropping my voice, so that Leah, who was still polishing the panes, could not hear me, “and at first I thought it was Pilot: but Pilot cannot laugh; and I am certain I heard a laugh, and a strange one.” She took a new needleful of thread, waxed it carefully, threaded her needle with a steady hand, and then observed, with perfect composure— “It is hardly likely master would laugh, I should think, Miss, when he was in such danger: You must have been dreaming.” “I was not dreaming,” I said, with some warmth, for her brazen coolness provoked me. Again she looked at me; and with the same scrutinising and conscious eye. “Have you told master that you heard a laugh?” she inquired. “I have not had the opportunity of speaking to him this morning.” “You did not think of opening your door and looking out into the gallery?” she further asked. She appeared to be cross-questioning me, attempting to draw from me information unawares. The idea struck me that if she discovered I knew or suspected her guilt, she would be playing of some of her malignant pranks on me; I thought it advisable to be on my guard. “On the contrary,” said I, “I bolted my door.” “Then you are not in the habit of bolting your door every night before you get into bed?” “Fiend! she wants to know my habits, that she may lay her plans accordingly!” Indignation again prevailed over prudence: I replied sharply, “Hitherto I have often omitted to fasten the bolt: I did not think it necessary. I was not aware any danger or annoyance was to be dreaded at Thornfield Hall: but in future” (and I laid marked stress on the words) “I shall take good care to make all secure before I venture to lie down.” “It will be wise so to do,” was her answer: “this neighbourhood is as quiet as any I know, and I never heard of the hall being attempted by robbers since it was a house; though there are hundreds of pounds’ worth of plate in the plate-closet, as is well known. And you see, for such a large house, there are very few servants, because master has never lived here much; and when he does come, being a bachelor, he needs little waiting on: but I always think it best to err on the safe side; a door is soon fastened, and it is as well to have a drawn bolt between one and any mischief that may be about. A deal of people, Miss, are for trusting all to Providence; but I say Providence will not dispense with the means, though He often blesses them when they are used discreetly.” And here she closed her harangue: a long one for her, and uttered with the demureness of a Quakeress. I still stood absolutely dumfoundered at what appeared to me her miraculous self-possession and most inscrutable hypocrisy, when the cook entered. “Mrs. Poole,” said she, addressing Grace, “the servants’ dinner will soon be ready: will you come down?” “No; just put my pint of porter and bit of pudding on a tray, and I’ll carry it upstairs.” “You’ll have some meat?” “Just a morsel, and a taste of cheese, that’s all.” “And the sago?” “Never mind it at present: I shall be coming down before teatime: I’ll make it myself.” The cook here turned to me, saying that Mrs. Fairfax was waiting for me: so I departed. I hardly heard Mrs. Fairfax’s account of the curtain conflagration during dinner, so much was I occupied in puzzling my brains over the enigmatical character of Grace Poole, and still more in pondering the problem of her position at Thornfield and questioning why she had not been given into custody that morning, or, at the very least, dismissed from her master’s service. He had almost as much as declared his conviction of her criminality last night: what mysterious cause withheld him from accusing her? Why had he enjoined me, too, to secrecy? It was strange: a bold, vindictive, and haughty gentleman seemed somehow in the power of one of the meanest of his dependents; so much in her power, that even when she lifted her hand against his life, he dared not openly charge her with the attempt, much less punish her for it. Had Grace been young and handsome, I should have been tempted to think that tenderer feelings than prudence or fear influenced Mr. Rochester in her behalf; but, hard-favoured and matronly as she was, the idea could not be admitted. “Yet,” I reflected, “she has been young once; her youth would be contemporary with her master’s: Mrs. Fairfax told me once, she had lived here many years. I don’t think she can ever have been pretty; but, for aught I know, she may possess originality and strength of character to compensate for the want of personal advantages. Mr. Rochester is an amateur of the decided and eccentric: Grace is eccentric at least. What if a former caprice (a freak very possible to a nature so sudden and headstrong as his) has delivered him into her power, and she now exercises over his actions a secret influence, the result of his own indiscretion, which he cannot shake off, and dare not disregard?” But, having reached this point of conjecture, Mrs. Poole’s square, flat figure, and uncomely, dry, even coarse face, recurred so distinctly to my mind’s eye, that I thought, “No; impossible! my supposition cannot be correct. Yet,” suggested the secret voice which talks to us in our own hearts, “_you_ are not beautiful either, and perhaps Mr. Rochester approves you: at any rate, you have often felt as if he did; and last night—remember his words; remember his look; remember his voice!” I well remembered all; language, glance, and tone seemed at the moment vividly renewed. I was now in the schoolroom; Adèle was drawing; I bent over her and directed her pencil. She looked up with a sort of start. “Qu’avez-vous, mademoiselle?” said she. “Vos doigts tremblent comme la feuille, et vos joues sont rouges: mais, rouges comme des cerises!” “I am hot, Adèle, with stooping!” She went on sketching; I went on thinking. I hastened to drive from my mind the hateful notion I had been conceiving respecting Grace Poole; it disgusted me. I compared myself with her, and found we were different. Bessie Leaven had said I was quite a lady; and she spoke truth—I was a lady. And now I looked much better than I did when Bessie saw me; I had more colour and more flesh, more life, more vivacity, because I had brighter hopes and keener enjoyments. “Evening approaches,” said I, as I looked towards the window. “I have never heard Mr. Rochester’s voice or step in the house to-day; but surely I shall see him before night: I feared the meeting in the morning; now I desire it, because expectation has been so long baffled that it is grown impatient.” When dusk actually closed, and when Adèle left me to go and play in the nursery with Sophie, I did most keenly desire it. I listened for the bell to ring below; I listened for Leah coming up with a message; I fancied sometimes I heard Mr. Rochester’s own tread, and I turned to the door, expecting it to open and admit him. The door remained shut; darkness only came in through the window. Still it was not late; he often sent for me at seven and eight o’clock, and it was yet but six. Surely I should not be wholly disappointed to-night, when I had so many things to say to him! I wanted again to introduce the subject of Grace Poole, and to hear what he would answer; I wanted to ask him plainly if he really believed it was she who had made last night’s hideous attempt; and if so, why he kept her wickedness a secret. It little mattered whether my curiosity irritated him; I knew the pleasure of vexing and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in, and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far; beyond the verge of provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked well to try my skill. Retaining every minute form of respect, every propriety of my station, I could still meet him in argument without fear or uneasy restraint; this suited both him and me. A tread creaked on the stairs at last. Leah made her appearance; but it was only to intimate that tea was ready in Mrs. Fairfax’s room. Thither I repaired, glad at least to go downstairs; for that brought me, I imagined, nearer to Mr. Rochester’s presence. “You must want your tea,” said the good lady, as I joined her; “you ate so little at dinner. I am afraid,” she continued, “you are not well to-day: you look flushed and feverish.” “Oh, quite well! I never felt better.” “Then you must prove it by evincing a good appetite; will you fill the teapot while I knit off this needle?” Having completed her task, she rose to draw down the blind, which she had hitherto kept up, by way, I suppose, of making the most of daylight, though dusk was now fast deepening into total obscurity. “It is fair to-night,” said she, as she looked through the panes, “though not starlight; Mr. Rochester has, on the whole, had a favourable day for his journey.” “Journey!—Is Mr. Rochester gone anywhere? I did not know he was out.” “Oh, he set off the moment he had breakfasted! He is gone to the Leas, Mr. Eshton’s place, ten miles on the other side Millcote. I believe there is quite a party assembled there; Lord Ingram, Sir George Lynn, Colonel Dent, and others.” “Do you expect him back to-night?” “No—nor to-morrow either; I should think he is very likely to stay a week or more: when these fine, fashionable people get together, they are so surrounded by elegance and gaiety, so well provided with all that can please and entertain, they are in no hurry to separate. Gentlemen especially are often in request on such occasions; and Mr. Rochester is so talented and so lively in society, that I believe he is a general favourite: the ladies are very fond of him; though you would not think his appearance calculated to recommend him particularly in their eyes: but I suppose his acquirements and abilities, perhaps his wealth and good blood, make amends for any little fault of look.” “Are there ladies at the Leas?” “There are Mrs. Eshton and her three daughters—very elegant young ladies indeed; and there are the Honourable Blanche and Mary Ingram, most beautiful women, I suppose: indeed I have seen Blanche, six or seven years since, when she was a girl of eighteen. She came here to a Christmas ball and party Mr. Rochester gave. You should have seen the dining-room that day—how richly it was decorated, how brilliantly lit up! I should think there were fifty ladies and gentlemen present—all of the first county families; and Miss Ingram was considered the belle of the evening.” “You saw her, you say, Mrs. Fairfax: what was she like?” “Yes, I saw her. The dining-room doors were thrown open; and, as it was Christmas-time, the servants were allowed to assemble in the hall, to hear some of the ladies sing and play. Mr. Rochester would have me to come in, and I sat down in a quiet corner and watched them. I never saw a more splendid scene: the ladies were magnificently dressed; most of them—at least most of the younger ones—looked handsome; but Miss Ingram was certainly the queen.” “And what was she like?” “Tall, fine bust, sloping shoulders; long, graceful neck: olive complexion, dark and clear; noble features; eyes rather like Mr. Rochester’s: large and black, and as brilliant as her jewels. And then she had such a fine head of hair; raven-black and so becomingly arranged: a crown of thick plaits behind, and in front the longest, the glossiest curls I ever saw. She was dressed in pure white; an amber-coloured scarf was passed over her shoulder and across her breast, tied at the side, and descending in long, fringed ends below her knee. She wore an amber-coloured flower, too, in her hair: it contrasted well with the jetty mass of her curls.” “She was greatly admired, of course?” “Yes, indeed: and not only for her beauty, but for her accomplishments. She was one of the ladies who sang: a gentleman accompanied her on the piano. She and Mr. Rochester sang a duet.” “Mr. Rochester? I was not aware he could sing.” “Oh! he has a fine bass voice, and an excellent taste for music.” “And Miss Ingram: what sort of a voice had she?” “A very rich and powerful one: she sang delightfully; it was a treat to listen to her;—and she played afterwards. I am no judge of music, but Mr. Rochester is; and I heard him say her execution was remarkably good.” “And this beautiful and accomplished lady, she is not yet married?” “It appears not: I fancy neither she nor her sister have very large fortunes. Old Lord Ingram’s estates were chiefly entailed, and the eldest son came in for everything almost.” “But I wonder no wealthy nobleman or gentleman has taken a fancy to her: Mr. Rochester, for instance. He is rich, is he not?” “Oh! yes. But you see there is a considerable difference in age: Mr. Rochester is nearly forty; she is but twenty-five.” “What of that? More unequal matches are made every day.” “True: yet I should scarcely fancy Mr. Rochester would entertain an idea of the sort. But you eat nothing: you have scarcely tasted since you began tea.” “No: I am too thirsty to eat. Will you let me have another cup?” I was about again to revert to the probability of a union between Mr. Rochester and the beautiful Blanche; but Adèle came in, and the conversation was turned into another channel. When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination’s boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common sense. Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night—of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told, in her own quiet way, a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured the ideal;—I pronounced judgment to this effect:— That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar. “_You_,” I said, “a favourite with Mr. Rochester? _You_ gifted with the power of pleasing him? _You_ of importance to him in any way? Go! your folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference—equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice. How dared you? Poor stupid dupe!—Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night?—Cover your face and be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness! It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, _ignis-fatuus_-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication. “Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: to-morrow, place the glass before you, and draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully, without softening one defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing irregularity; write under it, ‘Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor, and plain.’ “Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory—you have one prepared in your drawing-box: take your palette, mix your freshest, finest, clearest tints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate carefully the loveliest face you can imagine; paint it in your softest shades and sweetest lines, according to the description given by Mrs. Fairfax of Blanche Ingram; remember the raven ringlets, the oriental eye;—What! you revert to Mr. Rochester as a model! Order! No snivel!—no sentiment!—no regret! I will endure only sense and resolution. Recall the august yet harmonious lineaments, the Grecian neck and bust; let the round and dazzling arm be visible, and the delicate hand; omit neither diamond ring nor gold bracelet; portray faithfully the attire, aërial lace and glistening satin, graceful scarf and golden rose; call it ‘Blanche, an accomplished lady of rank.’ “Whenever, in future, you should chance to fancy Mr. Rochester thinks well of you, take out these two pictures and compare them: say, ‘Mr. Rochester might probably win that noble lady’s love, if he chose to strive for it; is it likely he would waste a serious thought on this indigent and insignificant plebeian?’” “I’ll do it,” I resolved: and having framed this determination, I grew calm, and fell asleep. I kept my word. An hour or two sufficed to sketch my own portrait in crayons; and in less than a fortnight I had completed an ivory miniature of an imaginary Blanche Ingram. It looked a lovely face enough, and when compared with the real head in chalk, the contrast was as great as self-control could desire. I derived benefit from the task: it had kept my head and hands employed, and had given force and fixedness to the new impressions I wished to stamp indelibly on my heart. Ere long, I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of wholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit. Thanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent calm, which, had they found me unprepared, I should probably have been unequal to maintain, even externally. ', 'A week passed, and no news arrived of Mr. Rochester: ten days, and still he did not come. Mrs. Fairfax said she should not be surprised if he were to go straight from the Leas to London, and thence to the Continent, and not show his face again at Thornfield for a year to come; he had not unfrequently quitted it in a manner quite as abrupt and unexpected. When I heard this, I was beginning to feel a strange chill and failing at the heart. I was actually permitting myself to experience a sickening sense of disappointment; but rallying my wits, and recollecting my principles, I at once called my sensations to order; and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder—how I cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr. Rochester’s movements a matter in which I had any cause to take a vital interest. Not that I humbled myself by a slavish notion of inferiority: on the contrary, I just said— “You have nothing to do with the master of Thornfield, further than to receive the salary he gives you for teaching his protégée, and to be grateful for such respectful and kind treatment as, if you do your duty, you have a right to expect at his hands. Be sure that is the only tie he seriously acknowledges between you and him; so don’t make him the object of your fine feelings, your raptures, agonies, and so forth. He is not of your order: keep to your caste, and be too self-respecting to lavish the love of the whole heart, soul, and strength, where such a gift is not wanted and would be despised.” I went on with my day’s business tranquilly; but ever and anon vague suggestions kept wandering across my brain of reasons why I should quit Thornfield; and I kept involuntarily framing advertisements and pondering conjectures about new situations: these thoughts I did not think to check; they might germinate and bear fruit if they could. Mr. Rochester had been absent upwards of a fortnight, when the post brought Mrs. Fairfax a letter. “It is from the master,” said she, as she looked at the direction. “Now I suppose we shall know whether we are to expect his return or not.” And while she broke the seal and perused the document, I went on taking my coffee (we were at breakfast): it was hot, and I attributed to that circumstance a fiery glow which suddenly rose to my face. Why my hand shook, and why I involuntarily spilt half the contents of my cup into my saucer, I did not choose to consider. “Well, I sometimes think we are too quiet; but we run a chance of being busy enough now: for a little while at least,” said Mrs. Fairfax, still holding the note before her spectacles. Ere I permitted myself to request an explanation, I tied the string of Adèle’s pinafore, which happened to be loose: having helped her also to another bun and refilled her mug with milk, I said, nonchalantly— “Mr. Rochester is not likely to return soon, I suppose?” “Indeed he is—in three days, he says: that will be next Thursday; and not alone either. I don’t know how many of the fine people at the Leas are coming with him: he sends directions for all the best bedrooms to be prepared; and the library and drawing-rooms are to be cleaned out; I am to get more kitchen hands from the George Inn, at Millcote, and from wherever else I can; and the ladies will bring their maids and the gentlemen their valets: so we shall have a full house of it.” And Mrs. Fairfax swallowed her breakfast and hastened away to commence operations. The three days were, as she had foretold, busy enough. I had thought all the rooms at Thornfield beautifully clean and well arranged; but it appears I was mistaken. Three women were got to help; and such scrubbing, such brushing, such washing of paint and beating of carpets, such taking down and putting up of pictures, such polishing of mirrors and lustres, such lighting of fires in bedrooms, such airing of sheets and feather-beds on hearths, I never beheld, either before or since. Adèle ran quite wild in the midst of it: the preparations for company and the prospect of their arrival, seemed to throw her into ecstasies. She would have Sophie to look over all her “toilettes,” as she called frocks; to furbish up any that were “_passées_,” and to air and arrange the new. For herself, she did nothing but caper about in the front chambers, jump on and off the bedsteads, and lie on the mattresses and piled-up bolsters and pillows before the enormous fires roaring in the chimneys. From school duties she was exonerated: Mrs. Fairfax had pressed me into her service, and I was all day in the storeroom, helping (or hindering) her and the cook; learning to make custards and cheese-cakes and French pastry, to truss game and garnish desert-dishes. The party were expected to arrive on Thursday afternoon, in time for dinner at six. During the intervening period I had no time to nurse chimeras; and I believe I was as active and gay as anybody—Adèle excepted. Still, now and then, I received a damping check to my cheerfulness; and was, in spite of myself, thrown back on the region of doubts and portents, and dark conjectures. This was when I chanced to see the third-storey staircase door (which of late had always been kept locked) open slowly, and give passage to the form of Grace Poole, in prim cap, white apron, and handkerchief; when I watched her glide along the gallery, her quiet tread muffled in a list slipper; when I saw her look into the bustling, topsy-turvy bedrooms,—just say a word, perhaps, to the charwoman about the proper way to polish a grate, or clean a marble mantelpiece, or take stains from papered walls, and then pass on. She would thus descend to the kitchen once a day, eat her dinner, smoke a moderate pipe on the hearth, and go back, carrying her pot of porter with her, for her private solace, in her own gloomy, upper haunt. Only one hour in the twenty-four did she pass with her fellow-servants below; all the rest of her time was spent in some low-ceiled, oaken chamber of the second storey: there she sat and sewed—and probably laughed drearily to herself,—as companionless as a prisoner in his dungeon. The strangest thing of all was, that not a soul in the house, except me, noticed her habits, or seemed to marvel at them: no one discussed her position or employment; no one pitied her solitude or isolation. I once, indeed, overheard part of a dialogue between Leah and one of the charwomen, of which Grace formed the subject. Leah had been saying something I had not caught, and the charwoman remarked— “She gets good wages, I guess?” “Yes,” said Leah; “I wish I had as good; not that mine are to complain of,—there’s no stinginess at Thornfield; but they’re not one fifth of the sum Mrs. Poole receives. And she is laying by: she goes every quarter to the bank at Millcote. I should not wonder but she has saved enough to keep her independent if she liked to leave; but I suppose she’s got used to the place; and then she’s not forty yet, and strong and able for anything. It is too soon for her to give up business.” “She is a good hand, I daresay,” said the charwoman. “Ah!—she understands what she has to do,—nobody better,” rejoined Leah significantly; “and it is not every one could fill her shoes—not for all the money she gets.” “That it is not!” was the reply. “I wonder whether the master—” The charwoman was going on; but here Leah turned and perceived me, and she instantly gave her companion a nudge. “Doesn’t she know?” I heard the woman whisper. Leah shook her head, and the conversation was of course dropped. All I had gathered from it amounted to this,—that there was a mystery at Thornfield; and that from participation in that mystery I was purposely excluded. Thursday came: all work had been completed the previous evening; carpets were laid down, bed-hangings festooned, radiant white counterpanes spread, toilet tables arranged, furniture rubbed, flowers piled in vases: both chambers and saloons looked as fresh and bright as hands could make them. The hall, too, was scoured; and the great carved clock, as well as the steps and banisters of the staircase, were polished to the brightness of glass; in the dining-room, the sideboard flashed resplendent with plate; in the drawing-room and boudoir, vases of exotics bloomed on all sides. Afternoon arrived: Mrs. Fairfax assumed her best black satin gown, her gloves, and her gold watch; for it was her part to receive the company,—to conduct the ladies to their rooms, &c. Adèle, too, would be dressed: though I thought she had little chance of being introduced to the party that day at least. However, to please her, I allowed Sophie to apparel her in one of her short, full muslin frocks. For myself, I had no need to make any change; I should not be called upon to quit my sanctum of the schoolroom; for a sanctum it was now become to me,—“a very pleasant refuge in time of trouble.” It had been a mild, serene spring day—one of those days which, towards the end of March or the beginning of April, rise shining over the earth as heralds of summer. It was drawing to an end now; but the evening was even warm, and I sat at work in the schoolroom with the window open. “It gets late,” said Mrs. Fairfax, entering in rustling state. “I am glad I ordered dinner an hour after the time Mr. Rochester mentioned; for it is past six now. I have sent John down to the gates to see if there is anything on the road: one can see a long way from thence in the direction of Millcote.” She went to the window. “Here he is!” said she. “Well, John” (leaning out), “any news?” “They’re coming, ma’am,” was the answer. “They’ll be here in ten minutes.” Adèle flew to the window. I followed, taking care to stand on one side, so that, screened by the curtain, I could see without being seen. The ten minutes John had given seemed very long, but at last wheels were heard; four equestrians galloped up the drive, and after them came two open carriages. Fluttering veils and waving plumes filled the vehicles; two of the cavaliers were young, dashing-looking gentlemen; the third was Mr. Rochester, on his black horse, Mesrour, Pilot bounding before him; at his side rode a lady, and he and she were the first of the party. Her purple riding-habit almost swept the ground, her veil streamed long on the breeze; mingling with its transparent folds, and gleaming through them, shone rich raven ringlets. “Miss Ingram!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax, and away she hurried to her post below. The cavalcade, following the sweep of the drive, quickly turned the angle of the house, and I lost sight of it. Adèle now petitioned to go down; but I took her on my knee, and gave her to understand that she must not on any account think of venturing in sight of the ladies, either now or at any other time, unless expressly sent for: that Mr. Rochester would be very angry, &c. “Some natural tears she shed” on being told this; but as I began to look very grave, she consented at last to wipe them. A joyous stir was now audible in the hall: gentlemen’s deep tones and ladies’ silvery accents blent harmoniously together, and distinguishable above all, though not loud, was the sonorous voice of the master of Thornfield Hall, welcoming his fair and gallant guests under its roof. Then light steps ascended the stairs; and there was a tripping through the gallery, and soft cheerful laughs, and opening and closing doors, and, for a time, a hush. “Elles changent de toilettes,” said Adèle; who, listening attentively, had followed every movement; and she sighed. “Chez maman,” said she, “quand il y avait du monde, je le suivais partout, au salon et à leurs chambres; souvent je regardais les femmes de chambre coiffer et habiller les dames, et c’était si amusant: comme cela on apprend.” “Don’t you feel hungry, Adèle?” “Mais oui, mademoiselle: voilà cinq ou six heures que nous n’avons pas mangé.” “Well now, while the ladies are in their rooms, I will venture down and get you something to eat.” And issuing from my asylum with precaution, I sought a back-stairs which conducted directly to the kitchen. All in that region was fire and commotion; the soup and fish were in the last stage of projection, and the cook hung over her crucibles in a frame of mind and body threatening spontaneous combustion. In the servants’ hall two coachmen and three gentlemen’s gentlemen stood or sat round the fire; the abigails, I suppose, were upstairs with their mistresses; the new servants, that had been hired from Millcote, were bustling about everywhere. Threading this chaos, I at last reached the larder; there I took possession of a cold chicken, a roll of bread, some tarts, a plate or two and a knife and fork: with this booty I made a hasty retreat. I had regained the gallery, and was just shutting the back-door behind me, when an accelerated hum warned me that the ladies were about to issue from their chambers. I could not proceed to the schoolroom without passing some of their doors, and running the risk of being surprised with my cargo of victualage; so I stood still at this end, which, being windowless, was dark: quite dark now, for the sun was set and twilight gathering. Presently the chambers gave up their fair tenants one after another: each came out gaily and airily, with dress that gleamed lustrous through the dusk. For a moment they stood grouped together at the other extremity of the gallery, conversing in a key of sweet subdued vivacity: they then descended the staircase almost as noiselessly as a bright mist rolls down a hill. Their collective appearance had left on me an impression of high-born elegance, such as I had never before received. I found Adèle peeping through the schoolroom door, which she held ajar. “What beautiful ladies!” cried she in English. “Oh, I wish I might go to them! Do you think Mr. Rochester will send for us by-and-by, after dinner?” “No, indeed, I don’t; Mr. Rochester has something else to think about. Never mind the ladies to-night; perhaps you will see them to-morrow: here is your dinner.” She was really hungry, so the chicken and tarts served to divert her attention for a time. It was well I secured this forage, or both she, I, and Sophie, to whom I conveyed a share of our repast, would have run a chance of getting no dinner at all: every one downstairs was too much engaged to think of us. The dessert was not carried out till after nine; and at ten footmen were still running to and fro with trays and coffee-cups. I allowed Adèle to sit up much later than usual; for she declared she could not possibly go to sleep while the doors kept opening and shutting below, and people bustling about. Besides, she added, a message might possibly come from Mr. Rochester when she was undressed; “et alors quel dommage!” I told her stories as long as she would listen to them; and then for a change I took her out into the gallery. The hall lamp was now lit, and it amused her to look over the balustrade and watch the servants passing backwards and forwards. When the evening was far advanced, a sound of music issued from the drawing-room, whither the piano had been removed; Adèle and I sat down on the top step of the stairs to listen. Presently a voice blent with the rich tones of the instrument; it was a lady who sang, and very sweet her notes were. The solo over, a duet followed, and then a glee: a joyous conversational murmur filled up the intervals. I listened long: suddenly I discovered that my ear was wholly intent on analysing the mingled sounds, and trying to discriminate amidst the confusion of accents those of Mr. Rochester; and when it caught them, which it soon did, it found a further task in framing the tones, rendered by distance inarticulate, into words. The clock struck eleven. I looked at Adèle, whose head leant against my shoulder; her eyes were waxing heavy, so I took her up in my arms and carried her off to bed. It was near one before the gentlemen and ladies sought their chambers. The next day was as fine as its predecessor: it was devoted by the party to an excursion to some site in the neighbourhood. They set out early in the forenoon, some on horseback, the rest in carriages; I witnessed both the departure and the return. Miss Ingram, as before, was the only lady equestrian; and, as before, Mr. Rochester galloped at her side; the two rode a little apart from the rest. I pointed out this circumstance to Mrs. Fairfax, who was standing at the window with me— “You said it was not likely they should think of being married,” said I, “but you see Mr. Rochester evidently prefers her to any of the other ladies.” “Yes, I daresay: no doubt he admires her.” “And she him,” I added; “look how she leans her head towards him as if she were conversing confidentially; I wish I could see her face; I have never had a glimpse of it yet.” “You will see her this evening,” answered Mrs. Fairfax. “I happened to remark to Mr. Rochester how much Adèle wished to be introduced to the ladies, and he said: ‘Oh! let her come into the drawing-room after dinner; and request Miss Eyre to accompany her.’” “Yes; he said that from mere politeness: I need not go, I am sure,” I answered. “Well, I observed to him that as you were unused to company, I did not think you would like appearing before so gay a party—all strangers; and he replied, in his quick way—‘Nonsense! If she objects, tell her it is my particular wish; and if she resists, say I shall come and fetch her in case of contumacy.’” “I will not give him that trouble,” I answered. “I will go, if no better may be; but I don’t like it. Shall you be there, Mrs. Fairfax?” “No; I pleaded off, and he admitted my plea. I’ll tell you how to manage so as to avoid the embarrassment of making a formal entrance, which is the most disagreeable part of the business. You must go into the drawing-room while it is empty, before the ladies leave the dinner-table; choose your seat in any quiet nook you like; you need not stay long after the gentlemen come in, unless you please: just let Mr. Rochester see you are there and then slip away—nobody will notice you.” “Will these people remain long, do you think?” “Perhaps two or three weeks, certainly not more. After the Easter recess, Sir George Lynn, who was lately elected member for Millcote, will have to go up to town and take his seat; I daresay Mr. Rochester will accompany him: it surprises me that he has already made so protracted a stay at Thornfield.” It was with some trepidation that I perceived the hour approach when I was to repair with my charge to the drawing-room. Adèle had been in a state of ecstasy all day, after hearing she was to be presented to the ladies in the evening; and it was not till Sophie commenced the operation of dressing her that she sobered down. Then the importance of the process quickly steadied her, and by the time she had her curls arranged in well-smoothed, drooping clusters, her pink satin frock put on, her long sash tied, and her lace mittens adjusted, she looked as grave as any judge. No need to warn her not to disarrange her attire: when she was dressed, she sat demurely down in her little chair, taking care previously to lift up the satin skirt for fear she should crease it, and assured me she would not stir thence till I was ready. This I quickly was: my best dress (the silver-grey one, purchased for Miss Temple’s wedding, and never worn since) was soon put on; my hair was soon smoothed; my sole ornament, the pearl brooch, soon assumed. We descended. Fortunately there was another entrance to the drawing-room than that through the saloon where they were all seated at dinner. We found the apartment vacant; a large fire burning silently on the marble hearth, and wax candles shining in bright solitude, amid the exquisite flowers with which the tables were adorned. The crimson curtain hung before the arch: slight as was the separation this drapery formed from the party in the adjoining saloon, they spoke in so low a key that nothing of their conversation could be distinguished beyond a soothing murmur. Adèle, who appeared to be still under the influence of a most solemnising impression, sat down, without a word, on the footstool I pointed out to her. I retired to a window-seat, and taking a book from a table near, endeavoured to read. Adèle brought her stool to my feet; ere long she touched my knee. “What is it, Adèle?” “Est-ce que je ne puis pas prendre une seule de ces fleurs magnifiques, mademoiselle? Seulement pour completer ma toilette.” “You think too much of your ‘toilette,’ Adèle: but you may have a flower.” And I took a rose from a vase and fastened it in her sash. She sighed a sigh of ineffable satisfaction, as if her cup of happiness were now full. I turned my face away to conceal a smile I could not suppress: there was something ludicrous as well as painful in the little Parisienne’s earnest and innate devotion to matters of dress. A soft sound of rising now became audible; the curtain was swept back from the arch; through it appeared the dining-room, with its lit lustre pouring down light on the silver and glass of a magnificent dessert-service covering a long table; a band of ladies stood in the opening; they entered, and the curtain fell behind them. There were but eight; yet, somehow, as they flocked in, they gave the impression of a much larger number. Some of them were very tall; many were dressed in white; and all had a sweeping amplitude of array that seemed to magnify their persons as a mist magnifies the moon. I rose and curtseyed to them: one or two bent their heads in return, the others only stared at me. They dispersed about the room, reminding me, by the lightness and buoyancy of their movements, of a flock of white plumy birds. Some of them threw themselves in half-reclining positions on the sofas and ottomans: some bent over the tables and examined the flowers and books: the rest gathered in a group round the fire: all talked in a low but clear tone which seemed habitual to them. I knew their names afterwards, and may as well mention them now. First, there was Mrs. Eshton and two of her daughters. She had evidently been a handsome woman, and was well preserved still. Of her daughters, the eldest, Amy, was rather little: naïve, and child-like in face and manner, and piquant in form; her white muslin dress and blue sash became her well. The second, Louisa, was taller and more elegant in figure; with a very pretty face, of that order the French term _minois chiffoné_: both sisters were fair as lilies. Lady Lynn was a large and stout personage of about forty, very erect, very haughty-looking, richly dressed in a satin robe of changeful sheen: her dark hair shone glossily under the shade of an azure plume, and within the circlet of a band of gems. Mrs. Colonel Dent was less showy; but, I thought, more lady-like. She had a slight figure, a pale, gentle face, and fair hair. Her black satin dress, her scarf of rich foreign lace, and her pearl ornaments, pleased me better than the rainbow radiance of the titled dame. But the three most distinguished—partly, perhaps, because the tallest figures of the band—were the Dowager Lady Ingram and her daughters, Blanche and Mary. They were all three of the loftiest stature of women. The Dowager might be between forty and fifty: her shape was still fine; her hair (by candle-light at least) still black; her teeth, too, were still apparently perfect. Most people would have termed her a splendid woman of her age: and so she was, no doubt, physically speaking; but then there was an expression of almost insupportable haughtiness in her bearing and countenance. She had Roman features and a double chin, disappearing into a throat like a pillar: these features appeared to me not only inflated and darkened, but even furrowed with pride; and the chin was sustained by the same principle, in a position of almost preternatural erectness. She had, likewise, a fierce and a hard eye: it reminded me of Mrs. Reed’s; she mouthed her words in speaking; her voice was deep, its inflections very pompous, very dogmatical,—very intolerable, in short. A crimson velvet robe, and a shawl turban of some gold-wrought Indian fabric, invested her (I suppose she thought) with a truly imperial dignity. Blanche and Mary were of equal stature,—straight and tall as poplars. Mary was too slim for her height, but Blanche was moulded like a Dian. I regarded her, of course, with special interest. First, I wished to see whether her appearance accorded with Mrs. Fairfax’s description; secondly, whether it at all resembled the fancy miniature I had painted of her; and thirdly—it will out!—whether it were such as I should fancy likely to suit Mr. Rochester’s taste. As far as person went, she answered point for point, both to my picture and Mrs. Fairfax’s description. The noble bust, the sloping shoulders, the graceful neck, the dark eyes and black ringlets were all there;—but her face? Her face was like her mother’s; a youthful unfurrowed likeness: the same low brow, the same high features, the same pride. It was not, however, so saturnine a pride! she laughed continually; her laugh was satirical, and so was the habitual expression of her arched and haughty lip. Genius is said to be self-conscious. I cannot tell whether Miss Ingram was a genius, but she was self-conscious—remarkably self-conscious indeed. She entered into a discourse on botany with the gentle Mrs. Dent. It seemed Mrs. Dent had not studied that science: though, as she said, she liked flowers, “especially wild ones;” Miss Ingram had, and she ran over its vocabulary with an air. I presently perceived she was (what is vernacularly termed) _trailing_ Mrs. Dent; that is, playing on her ignorance; her _trail_ might be clever, but it was decidedly not good-natured. She played: her execution was brilliant; she sang: her voice was fine; she talked French apart to her mamma; and she talked it well, with fluency and with a good accent. Mary had a milder and more open countenance than Blanche; softer features too, and a skin some shades fairer (Miss Ingram was dark as a Spaniard)—but Mary was deficient in life: her face lacked expression, her eye lustre; she had nothing to say, and having once taken her seat, remained fixed like a statue in its niche. The sisters were both attired in spotless white. And did I now think Miss Ingram such a choice as Mr. Rochester would be likely to make? I could not tell—I did not know his taste in female beauty. If he liked the majestic, she was the very type of majesty: then she was accomplished, sprightly. Most gentlemen would admire her, I thought; and that he _did_ admire her, I already seemed to have obtained proof: to remove the last shade of doubt, it remained but to see them together. You are not to suppose, reader, that Adèle has all this time been sitting motionless on the stool at my feet: no; when the ladies entered, she rose, advanced to meet them, made a stately reverence, and said with gravity— “Bon jour, mesdames.” And Miss Ingram had looked down at her with a mocking air, and exclaimed, “Oh, what a little puppet!” Lady Lynn had remarked, “It is Mr. Rochester’s ward, I suppose—the little French girl he was speaking of.” Mrs. Dent had kindly taken her hand, and given her a kiss. Amy and Louisa Eshton had cried out simultaneously— “What a love of a child!” And then they had called her to a sofa, where she now sat, ensconced between them, chattering alternately in French and broken English; absorbing not only the young ladies’ attention, but that of Mrs. Eshton and Lady Lynn, and getting spoilt to her heart’s content. At last coffee is brought in, and the gentlemen are summoned. I sit in the shade—if any shade there be in this brilliantly-lit apartment; the window-curtain half hides me. Again the arch yawns; they come. The collective appearance of the gentlemen, like that of the ladies, is very imposing: they are all costumed in black; most of them are tall, some young. Henry and Frederick Lynn are very dashing sparks indeed; and Colonel Dent is a fine soldierly man. Mr. Eshton, the magistrate of the district, is gentleman-like: his hair is quite white, his eyebrows and whiskers still dark, which gives him something of the appearance of a “père noble de théâtre.” Lord Ingram, like his sisters, is very tall; like them, also, he is handsome; but he shares Mary’s apathetic and listless look: he seems to have more length of limb than vivacity of blood or vigour of brain. And where is Mr. Rochester? He comes in last: I am not looking at the arch, yet I see him enter. I try to concentrate my attention on those netting-needles, on the meshes of the purse I am forming—I wish to think only of the work I have in my hands, to see only the silver beads and silk threads that lie in my lap; whereas, I distinctly behold his figure, and I inevitably recall the moment when I last saw it; just after I had rendered him, what he deemed, an essential service, and he, holding my hand, and looking down on my face, surveyed me with eyes that revealed a heart full and eager to overflow; in whose emotions I had a part. How near had I approached him at that moment! What had occurred since, calculated to change his and my relative positions? Yet now, how distant, how far estranged we were! So far estranged, that I did not expect him to come and speak to me. I did not wonder, when, without looking at me, he took a seat at the other side of the room, and began conversing with some of the ladies. No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face; I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise, and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless. Most true is it that “beauty is in the eye of the gazer.” My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth,—all energy, decision, will,—were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me,—that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me. I compared him with his guests. What was the gallant grace of the Lynns, the languid elegance of Lord Ingram,—even the military distinction of Colonel Dent, contrasted with his look of native pith and genuine power? I had no sympathy in their appearance, their expression: yet I could imagine that most observers would call them attractive, handsome, imposing; while they would pronounce Mr. Rochester at once harsh-featured and melancholy-looking. I saw them smile, laugh—it was nothing; the light of the candles had as much soul in it as their smile; the tinkle of the bell as much significance as their laugh. I saw Mr. Rochester smile:—his stern features softened; his eye grew both brilliant and gentle, its ray both searching and sweet. He was talking, at the moment, to Louisa and Amy Eshton. I wondered to see them receive with calm that look which seemed to me so penetrating: I expected their eyes to fall, their colour to rise under it; yet I was glad when I found they were in no sense moved. “He is not to them what he is to me,” I thought: “he is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine;—I am sure he is—I feel akin to him—I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him. Did I say, a few days since, that I had nothing to do with him but to receive my salary at his hands? Did I forbid myself to think of him in any other light than as a paymaster? Blasphemy against nature! Every good, true, vigorous feeling I have gathers impulsively round him. I know I must conceal my sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I have his force to influence, and his spell to attract; I mean only that I have certain tastes and feelings in common with him. I must, then, repeat continually that we are for ever sundered:—and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.” Coffee is handed. The ladies, since the gentlemen entered, have become lively as larks; conversation waxes brisk and merry. Colonel Dent and Mr. Eshton argue on politics; their wives listen. The two proud dowagers, Lady Lynn and Lady Ingram, confabulate together. Sir George—whom, by-the-bye, I have forgotten to describe,—a very big, and very fresh-looking country gentleman, stands before their sofa, coffee-cup in hand, and occasionally puts in a word. Mr. Frederick Lynn has taken a seat beside Mary Ingram, and is showing her the engravings of a splendid volume: she looks, smiles now and then, but apparently says little. The tall and phlegmatic Lord Ingram leans with folded arms on the chair-back of the little and lively Amy Eshton; she glances up at him, and chatters like a wren: she likes him better than she does Mr. Rochester. Henry Lynn has taken possession of an ottoman at the feet of Louisa: Adèle shares it with him: he is trying to talk French with her, and Louisa laughs at his blunders. With whom will Blanche Ingram pair? She is standing alone at the table, bending gracefully over an album. She seems waiting to be sought; but she will not wait too long: she herself selects a mate. Mr. Rochester, having quitted the Eshtons, stands on the hearth as solitary as she stands by the table: she confronts him, taking her station on the opposite side of the mantelpiece. “Mr. Rochester, I thought you were not fond of children?” “Nor am I.” “Then, what induced you to take charge of such a little doll as that?” (pointing to Adèle). “Where did you pick her up?” “I did not pick her up; she was left on my hands.” “You should have sent her to school.” “I could not afford it: schools are so dear.” “Why, I suppose you have a governess for her: I saw a person with her just now—is she gone? Oh, no! there she is still, behind the window-curtain. You pay her, of course; I should think it quite as expensive,—more so; for you have them both to keep in addition.” I feared—or should I say, hoped?—the allusion to me would make Mr. Rochester glance my way; and I involuntarily shrank farther into the shade: but he never turned his eyes. “I have not considered the subject,” said he indifferently, looking straight before him. “No, you men never do consider economy and common sense. You should hear mama on the chapter of governesses: Mary and I have had, I should think, a dozen at least in our day; half of them detestable and the rest ridiculous, and all incubi—were they not, mama?” “Did you speak, my own?” The young lady thus claimed as the dowager’s special property, reiterated her question with an explanation. “My dearest, don’t mention governesses; the word makes me nervous. I have suffered a martyrdom from their incompetency and caprice. I thank Heaven I have now done with them!” Mrs. Dent here bent over to the pious lady and whispered something in her ear; I suppose, from the answer elicited, it was a reminder that one of the anathematised race was present. “Tant pis!” said her Ladyship, “I hope it may do her good!” Then, in a lower tone, but still loud enough for me to hear, “I noticed her; I am a judge of physiognomy, and in hers I see all the faults of her class.” “What are they, madam?” inquired Mr. Rochester aloud. “I will tell you in your private ear,” replied she, wagging her turban three times with portentous significancy. “But my curiosity will be past its appetite; it craves food now.” “Ask Blanche; she is nearer you than I.” “Oh, don’t refer him to me, mama! I have just one word to say of the whole tribe; they are a nuisance. Not that I ever suffered much from them; I took care to turn the tables. What tricks Theodore and I used to play on our Miss Wilsons, and Mrs. Greys, and Madame Jouberts! Mary was always too sleepy to join in a plot with spirit. The best fun was with Madame Joubert: Miss Wilson was a poor sickly thing, lachrymose and low-spirited, not worth the trouble of vanquishing, in short; and Mrs. Grey was coarse and insensible; no blow took effect on her. But poor Madame Joubert! I see her yet in her raging passions, when we had driven her to extremities—spilt our tea, crumbled our bread and butter, tossed our books up to the ceiling, and played a charivari with the ruler and desk, the fender and fire-irons. Theodore, do you remember those merry days?” “Yaas, to be sure I do,” drawled Lord Ingram; “and the poor old stick used to cry out, ‘Oh you villains childs!’—and then we sermonised her on the presumption of attempting to teach such clever blades as we were, when she was herself so ignorant.” “We did; and, Tedo, you know, I helped you in prosecuting (or persecuting) your tutor, whey-faced Mr. Vining—the parson in the pip, as we used to call him. He and Miss Wilson took the liberty of falling in love with each other—at least Tedo and I thought so; we surprised sundry tender glances and sighs which we interpreted as tokens of ‘la belle passion,’ and I promise you the public soon had the benefit of our discovery; we employed it as a sort of lever to hoist our dead-weights from the house. Dear mama, there, as soon as she got an inkling of the business, found out that it was of an immoral tendency. Did you not, my lady-mother?” “Certainly, my best. And I was quite right: depend on that: there are a thousand reasons why liaisons between governesses and tutors should never be tolerated a moment in any well-regulated house; firstly—” “Oh, gracious, mama! Spare us the enumeration! _Au reste_, we all know them: danger of bad example to innocence of childhood; distractions and consequent neglect of duty on the part of the attached—mutual alliance and reliance; confidence thence resulting—insolence accompanying—mutiny and general blow-up. Am I right, Baroness Ingram, of Ingram Park?” “My lily-flower, you are right now, as always.” “Then no more need be said: change the subject.” Amy Eshton, not hearing or not heeding this dictum, joined in with her soft, infantine tone: “Louisa and I used to quiz our governess too; but she was such a good creature, she would bear anything: nothing put her out. She was never cross with us; was she, Louisa?” “No, never: we might do what we pleased; ransack her desk and her workbox, and turn her drawers inside out; and she was so good-natured, she would give us anything we asked for.” “I suppose, now,” said Miss Ingram, curling her lip sarcastically, “we shall have an abstract of the memoirs of all the governesses extant: in order to avert such a visitation, I again move the introduction of a new topic. Mr. Rochester, do you second my motion?” “Madam, I support you on this point, as on every other.” “Then on me be the onus of bringing it forward. Signior Eduardo, are you in voice to-night?” “Donna Bianca, if you command it, I will be.” “Then, signior, I lay on you my sovereign behest to furbish up your lungs and other vocal organs, as they will be wanted on my royal service.” “Who would not be the Rizzio of so divine a Mary?” “A fig for Rizzio!” cried she, tossing her head with all its curls, as she moved to the piano. “It is my opinion the fiddler David must have been an insipid sort of fellow; I like black Bothwell better: to my mind a man is nothing without a spice of the devil in him; and history may say what it will of James Hepburn, but I have a notion, he was just the sort of wild, fierce, bandit hero whom I could have consented to gift with my hand.” “Gentlemen, you hear! Now which of you most resembles Bothwell?” cried Mr. Rochester. “I should say the preference lies with you,” responded Colonel Dent. “On my honour, I am much obliged to you,” was the reply. Miss Ingram, who had now seated herself with proud grace at the piano, spreading out her snowy robes in queenly amplitude, commenced a brilliant prelude; talking meantime. She appeared to be on her high horse to-night; both her words and her air seemed intended to excite not only the admiration, but the amazement of her auditors: she was evidently bent on striking them as something very dashing and daring indeed. “Oh, I am so sick of the young men of the present day!” exclaimed she, rattling away at the instrument. “Poor, puny things, not fit to stir a step beyond papa’s park gates: nor to go even so far without mama’s permission and guardianship! Creatures so absorbed in care about their pretty faces, and their white hands, and their small feet; as if a man had anything to do with beauty! As if loveliness were not the special prerogative of woman—her legitimate appanage and heritage! I grant an ugly _woman_ is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the _gentlemen_, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and valour: let their motto be:—Hunt, shoot, and fight: the rest is not worth a fillip. Such should be my device, were I a man.” “Whenever I marry,” she continued after a pause which none interrupted, “I am resolved my husband shall not be a rival, but a foil to me. I will suffer no competitor near the throne; I shall exact an undivided homage: his devotions shall not be shared between me and the shape he sees in his mirror. Mr. Rochester, now sing, and I will play for you.” “I am all obedience,” was the response. “Here then is a Corsair-song. Know that I doat on Corsairs; and for that reason, sing it _con spirito_.” “Commands from Miss Ingram’s lips would put spirit into a mug of milk and water.” “Take care, then: if you don’t please me, I will shame you by showing how such things _should_ be done.” “That is offering a premium on incapacity: I shall now endeavour to fail.” “Gardez-vous en bien! If you err wilfully, I shall devise a proportionate punishment.” “Miss Ingram ought to be clement, for she has it in her power to inflict a chastisement beyond mortal endurance.” “Ha! explain!” commanded the lady. “Pardon me, madam: no need of explanation; your own fine sense must inform you that one of your frowns would be a sufficient substitute for capital punishment.” “Sing!” said she, and again touching the piano, she commenced an accompaniment in spirited style. “Now is my time to slip away,” thought I: but the tones that then severed the air arrested me. Mrs. Fairfax had said Mr. Rochester possessed a fine voice: he did—a mellow, powerful bass, into which he threw his own feeling, his own force; finding a way through the ear to the heart, and there waking sensation strangely. I waited till the last deep and full vibration had expired—till the tide of talk, checked an instant, had resumed its flow; I then quitted my sheltered corner and made my exit by the side-door, which was fortunately near. Thence a narrow passage led into the hall: in crossing it, I perceived my sandal was loose; I stopped to tie it, kneeling down for that purpose on the mat at the foot of the staircase. I heard the dining-room door unclose; a gentleman came out; rising hastily, I stood face to face with him: it was Mr. Rochester. “How do you do?” he asked. “I am very well, sir.” “Why did you not come and speak to me in the room?” I thought I might have retorted the question on him who put it: but I would not take that freedom. I answered— “I did not wish to disturb you, as you seemed engaged, sir.” “What have you been doing during my absence?” “Nothing particular; teaching Adèle as usual.” “And getting a good deal paler than you were—as I saw at first sight. What is the matter?” “Nothing at all, sir.” “Did you take any cold that night you half drowned me?” “Not the least.” “Return to the drawing-room: you are deserting too early.” “I am tired, sir.” He looked at me for a minute. “And a little depressed,” he said. “What about? Tell me.” “Nothing—nothing, sir. I am not depressed.” “But I affirm that you are: so much depressed that a few more words would bring tears to your eyes—indeed, they are there now, shining and swimming; and a bead has slipped from the lash and fallen on to the flag. If I had time, and was not in mortal dread of some prating prig of a servant passing, I would know what all this means. Well, to-night I excuse you; but understand that so long as my visitors stay, I expect you to appear in the drawing-room every evening; it is my wish; don’t neglect it. Now go, and send Sophie for Adèle. Good-night, my—” He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me. ', 'Merry days were these at Thornfield Hall; and busy days too: how different from the first three months of stillness, monotony, and solitude I had passed beneath its roof! All sad feelings seemed now driven from the house, all gloomy associations forgotten: there was life everywhere, movement all day long. You could not now traverse the gallery, once so hushed, nor enter the front chambers, once so tenantless, without encountering a smart lady’s-maid or a dandy valet. The kitchen, the butler’s pantry, the servants’ hall, the entrance hall, were equally alive; and the saloons were only left void and still when the blue sky and halcyon sunshine of the genial spring weather called their occupants out into the grounds. Even when that weather was broken, and continuous rain set in for some days, no damp seemed cast over enjoyment: indoor amusements only became more lively and varied, in consequence of the stop put to outdoor gaiety. I wondered what they were going to do the first evening a change of entertainment was proposed: they spoke of “playing charades,” but in my ignorance I did not understand the term. The servants were called in, the dining-room tables wheeled away, the lights otherwise disposed, the chairs placed in a semicircle opposite the arch. While Mr. Rochester and the other gentlemen directed these alterations, the ladies were running up and down stairs ringing for their maids. Mrs. Fairfax was summoned to give information respecting the resources of the house in shawls, dresses, draperies of any kind; and certain wardrobes of the third storey were ransacked, and their contents, in the shape of brocaded and hooped petticoats, satin sacques, black modes, lace lappets, &c., were brought down in armfuls by the abigails; then a selection was made, and such things as were chosen were carried to the boudoir within the drawing-room. Meantime, Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him, and was selecting certain of their number to be of his party. “Miss Ingram is mine, of course,” said he: afterwards he named the two Misses Eshton, and Mrs. Dent. He looked at me: I happened to be near him, as I had been fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent’s bracelet, which had got loose. “Will you play?” he asked. I shook my head. He did not insist, which I rather feared he would have done; he allowed me to return quietly to my usual seat. He and his aids now withdrew behind the curtain: the other party, which was headed by Colonel Dent, sat down on the crescent of chairs. One of the gentlemen, Mr. Eshton, observing me, seemed to propose that I should be asked to join them; but Lady Ingram instantly negatived the notion. “No,” I heard her say: “she looks too stupid for any game of the sort.” Ere long a bell tinkled, and the curtain drew up. Within the arch, the bulky figure of Sir George Lynn, whom Mr. Rochester had likewise chosen, was seen enveloped in a white sheet: before him, on a table, lay open a large book; and at his side stood Amy Eshton, draped in Mr. Rochester’s cloak, and holding a book in her hand. Somebody, unseen, rang the bell merrily; then Adèle (who had insisted on being one of her guardian’s party), bounded forward, scattering round her the contents of a basket of flowers she carried on her arm. Then appeared the magnificent figure of Miss Ingram, clad in white, a long veil on her head, and a wreath of roses round her brow; by her side walked Mr. Rochester, and together they drew near the table. They knelt; while Mrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton, dressed also in white, took up their stations behind them. A ceremony followed, in dumb show, in which it was easy to recognise the pantomime of a marriage. At its termination, Colonel Dent and his party consulted in whispers for two minutes, then the Colonel called out— “Bride!” Mr. Rochester bowed, and the curtain fell. A considerable interval elapsed before it again rose. Its second rising displayed a more elaborately prepared scene than the last. The drawing-room, as I have before observed, was raised two steps above the dining-room, and on the top of the upper step, placed a yard or two back within the room, appeared a large marble basin, which I recognised as an ornament of the conservatory—where it usually stood, surrounded by exotics, and tenanted by gold fish—and whence it must have been transported with some trouble, on account of its size and weight. Seated on the carpet, by the side of this basin, was seen Mr. Rochester, costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head. His dark eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the costume exactly: he looked the very model of an Eastern emir, an agent or a victim of the bowstring. Presently advanced into view Miss Ingram. She, too, was attired in oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the waist: an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised in the act of supporting a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head. Both her cast of form and feature, her complexion and her general air, suggested the idea of some Israelitish princess of the patriarchal days; and such was doubtless the character she intended to represent. She approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her pitcher; she again lifted it to her head. The personage on the well-brink now seemed to accost her; to make some request:—“She hasted, let down her pitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink.” From the bosom of his robe he then produced a casket, opened it and showed magnificent bracelets and earrings; she acted astonishment and admiration; kneeling, he laid the treasure at her feet; incredulity and delight were expressed by her looks and gestures; the stranger fastened the bracelets on her arms and the rings in her ears. It was Eliezer and Rebecca: the camels only were wanting. The divining party again laid their heads together: apparently they could not agree about the word or syllable the scene illustrated. Colonel Dent, their spokesman, demanded “the tableau of the whole;” whereupon the curtain again descended. On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed; the rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort of dark and coarse drapery. The marble basin was removed; in its place, stood a deal table and a kitchen chair: these objects were visible by a very dim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles being all extinguished. Amidst this sordid scene, sat a man with his clenched hands resting on his knees, and his eyes bent on the ground. I knew Mr. Rochester; though the begrimed face, the disordered dress (his coat hanging loose from one arm, as if it had been almost torn from his back in a scuffle), the desperate and scowling countenance, the rough, bristling hair might well have disguised him. As he moved, a chain clanked; to his wrists were attached fetters. “Bridewell!” exclaimed Colonel Dent, and the charade was solved. A sufficient interval having elapsed for the performers to resume their ordinary costume, they re-entered the dining-room. Mr. Rochester led in Miss Ingram; she was complimenting him on his acting. “Do you know,” said she, “that, of the three characters, I liked you in the last best? Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier, what a gallant gentleman-highwayman you would have made!” “Is all the soot washed from my face?” he asked, turning it towards her. “Alas! yes: the more’s the pity! Nothing could be more becoming to your complexion than that ruffian’s rouge.” “You would like a hero of the road then?” “An English hero of the road would be the next best thing to an Italian bandit; and that could only be surpassed by a Levantine pirate.” “Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were married an hour since, in the presence of all these witnesses.” She giggled, and her colour rose. “Now, Dent,” continued Mr. Rochester, “it is your turn.” And as the other party withdrew, he and his band took the vacated seats. Miss Ingram placed herself at her leader’s right hand; the other diviners filled the chairs on each side of him and her. I did not now watch the actors; I no longer waited with interest for the curtain to rise; my attention was absorbed by the spectators; my eyes, erewhile fixed on the arch, were now irresistibly attracted to the semicircle of chairs. What charade Colonel Dent and his party played, what word they chose, how they acquitted themselves, I no longer remember; but I still see the consultation which followed each scene: I see Mr. Rochester turn to Miss Ingram, and Miss Ingram to him; I see her incline her head towards him, till the jetty curls almost touch his shoulder and wave against his cheek; I hear their mutual whisperings; I recall their interchanged glances; and something even of the feeling roused by the spectacle returns in memory at this moment. I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me—because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction—because I saw all his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady—because I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her—because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible. There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram’s. But I was not jealous: or very rarely;—the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine: she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used to repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her. Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adèle: pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with coldness and acrimony. Other eyes besides mine watched these manifestations of character—watched them closely, keenly, shrewdly. Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity—this guardedness of his—this perfect, clear consciousness of his fair one’s defects—this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that my ever-torturing pain arose. I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point—this was where the nerve was touched and teased—this was where the fever was sustained and fed: _she could not charm him_. If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and (figuratively) have died to them. If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers—jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her—acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would have been my admiration—the more truly tranquil my quiescence. But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram’s efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated failure—herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure—to witness _this_, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint. Because, when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester’s breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart—have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face; or, better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won. “Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw so near to him?” I asked myself. “Surely she cannot truly like him, or not like him with true affection! If she did, she need not coin her smiles so lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she might, by merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and looking less, get nigher his heart. I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it—to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace—and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam. How will she manage to please him when they are married? I do not think she will manage it; and yet it might be managed; and his wife might, I verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun shines on.” I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester’s project of marrying for interest and connections. It surprised me when I first discovered that such was his intention: I had thought him a man unlikely to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his choice of a wife; but the longer I considered the position, education, &c., of the parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming either him or Miss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood. All their class held these principles: I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husband’s own happiness offered by this plan convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act. But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a sharp look-out. It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid. And as for the vague something—was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression?—that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare—to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature. Meantime, while I thought only of my master and his future bride—saw only them, heard only their discourse, and considered only their movements of importance—the rest of the party were occupied with their own separate interests and pleasures. The Ladies Lynn and Ingram continued to consort in solemn conferences, where they nodded their two turbans at each other, and held up their four hands in confronting gestures of surprise, or mystery, or horror, according to the theme on which their gossip ran, like a pair of magnified puppets. Mild Mrs. Dent talked with good-natured Mrs. Eshton; and the two sometimes bestowed a courteous word or smile on me. Sir George Lynn, Colonel Dent, and Mr. Eshton discussed politics, or county affairs, or justice business. Lord Ingram flirted with Amy Eshton; Louisa played and sang to and with one of the Messrs. Lynn; and Mary Ingram listened languidly to the gallant speeches of the other. Sometimes all, as with one consent, suspended their by-play to observe and listen to the principal actors: for, after all, Mr. Rochester and—because closely connected with him—Miss Ingram were the life and soul of the party. If he was absent from the room an hour, a perceptible dulness seemed to steal over the spirits of his guests; and his re-entrance was sure to give a fresh impulse to the vivacity of conversation. The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly felt one day that he had been summoned to Millcote on business, and was not likely to return till late. The afternoon was wet: a walk the party had proposed to take to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched on a common beyond Hay, was consequently deferred. Some of the gentlemen were gone to the stables: the younger ones, together with the younger ladies, were playing billiards in the billiard-room. The dowagers Ingram and Lynn sought solace in a quiet game at cards. Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence. The room and the house were silent: only now and then the merriment of the billiard-players was heard from above. It was verging on dusk, and the clock had already given warning of the hour to dress for dinner, when little Adèle, who knelt by me in the drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed— “Voilà Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!” I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa: the others, too, looked up from their several occupations; for at the same time a crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible on the wet gravel. A post-chaise was approaching. “What can possess him to come home in that style?” said Miss Ingram. “He rode Mesrour (the black horse), did he not, when he went out? and Pilot was with him:—what has he done with the animals?” As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments so near the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking of my spine: in her eagerness she did not observe me at first, but when she did, she curled her lip and moved to another casement. The post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Rochester; it was a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger. “How provoking!” exclaimed Miss Ingram: “you tiresome monkey!” (apostrophising Adèle), “who perched you up in the window to give false intelligence?” and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were in fault. Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the new-comer entered. He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest lady present. “It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam,” said he, “when my friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very long journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns.” His manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as being somewhat unusual,—not precisely foreign, but still not altogether English: his age might be about Mr. Rochester’s,—between thirty and forty; his complexion was singularly sallow: otherwise he was a fine-looking man, at first sight especially. On closer examination, you detected something in his face that displeased, or rather that failed to please. His features were regular, but too relaxed: his eye was large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame, vacant life—at least so I thought. The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party. It was not till after dinner that I saw him again: he then seemed quite at his ease. But I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as being at the same time unsettled and inanimate. His eye wandered, and had no meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look, such as I never remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not an unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no power in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the low, even forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye. As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him—for he occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire, and kept shrinking still nearer, as if he were cold, I compared him with Mr. Rochester. I think (with deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the rough-coated keen-eyed dog, its guardian. He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A curious friendship theirs must have been: a pointed illustration, indeed, of the old adage that “extremes meet.” Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times scraps of their conversation across the room. At first I could not make much sense of what I heard; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary Ingram, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that reached me at intervals. These last were discussing the stranger; they both called him “a beautiful man.” Louisa said he was “a love of a creature,” and she “adored him;” and Mary instanced his “pretty little mouth, and nice nose,” as her ideal of the charming. “And what a sweet-tempered forehead he has!” cried Louisa,—“so smooth—none of those frowning irregularities I dislike so much; and such a placid eye and smile!” And then, to my great relief, Mr. Henry Lynn summoned them to the other side of the room, to settle some point about the deferred excursion to Hay Common. I was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the fire, and I presently gathered that the new-comer was called Mr. Mason; then I learned that he was but just arrived in England, and that he came from some hot country: which was the reason, doubtless, his face was so sallow, and that he sat so near the hearth, and wore a surtout in the house. Presently the words Jamaica, Kingston, Spanish Town, indicated the West Indies as his residence; and it was with no little surprise I gathered, ere long, that he had there first seen and become acquainted with Mr. Rochester. He spoke of his friend’s dislike of the burning heats, the hurricanes, and rainy seasons of that region. I knew Mr. Rochester had been a traveller: Mrs. Fairfax had said so; but I thought the continent of Europe had bounded his wanderings; till now I had never heard a hint given of visits to more distant shores. I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings. Mr. Mason, shivering as some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still shone hot and red. The footman who brought the coal, in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton’s chair, and said something to him in a low voice, of which I heard only the words, “old woman,”—“quite troublesome.” “Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not take herself off,” replied the magistrate. “No—stop!” interrupted Colonel Dent. “Don’t send her away, Eshton; we might turn the thing to account; better consult the ladies.” And speaking aloud, he continued—“Ladies, you talked of going to Hay Common to visit the gipsy camp; Sam here says that one of the old Mother Bunches is in the servants’ hall at this moment, and insists upon being brought in before ‘the quality,’ to tell them their fortunes. Would you like to see her?” “Surely, colonel,” cried Lady Ingram, “you would not encourage such a low impostor? Dismiss her, by all means, at once!” “But I cannot persuade her to go away, my lady,” said the footman; “nor can any of the servants: Mrs. Fairfax is with her just now, entreating her to be gone; but she has taken a chair in the chimney-corner, and says nothing shall stir her from it till she gets leave to come in here.” “What does she want?” asked Mrs. Eshton. “‘To tell the gentry their fortunes,’ she says, ma’am; and she swears she must and will do it.” “What is she like?” inquired the Misses Eshton, in a breath. “A shockingly ugly old creature, miss; almost as black as a crock.” “Why, she’s a real sorceress!” cried Frederick Lynn. “Let us have her in, of course.” “To be sure,” rejoined his brother; “it would be a thousand pities to throw away such a chance of fun.” “My dear boys, what are you thinking about?” exclaimed Mrs. Lynn. “I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent proceeding,” chimed in the Dowager Ingram. “Indeed, mama, but you can—and will,” pronounced the haughty voice of Blanche, as she turned round on the piano-stool; where till now she had sat silent, apparently examining sundry sheets of music. “I have a curiosity to hear my fortune told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame forward.” “My darling Blanche! recollect—” “I do—I recollect all you can suggest; and I must have my will—quick, Sam!” “Yes—yes—yes!” cried all the juveniles, both ladies and gentlemen. “Let her come—it will be excellent sport!” The footman still lingered. “She looks such a rough one,” said he. “Go!” ejaculated Miss Ingram, and the man went. Excitement instantly seized the whole party: a running fire of raillery and jests was proceeding when Sam returned. “She won’t come now,” said he. “She says it’s not her mission to appear before the ‘vulgar herd’ (them’s her words). I must show her into a room by herself, and then those who wish to consult her must go to her one by one.” “You see now, my queenly Blanche,” began Lady Ingram, “she encroaches. Be advised, my angel girl—and—” “Show her into the library, of course,” cut in the “angel girl.” “It is not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either: I mean to have her all to myself. Is there a fire in the library?” “Yes, ma’am—but she looks such a tinkler.” “Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do my bidding.” Again Sam vanished; and mystery, animation, expectation rose to full flow once more. “She’s ready now,” said the footman, as he reappeared. “She wishes to know who will be her first visitor.” “I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies go,” said Colonel Dent. “Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming.” Sam went and returned. “She says, sir, that she’ll have no gentlemen; they need not trouble themselves to come near her; nor,” he added, with difficulty suppressing a titter, “any ladies either, except the young, and single.” “By Jove, she has taste!” exclaimed Henry Lynn. Miss Ingram rose solemnly: “I go first,” she said, in a tone which might have befitted the leader of a forlorn hope, mounting a breach in the van of his men. “Oh, my best! oh, my dearest! pause—reflect!” was her mama’s cry; but she swept past her in stately silence, passed through the door which Colonel Dent held open, and we heard her enter the library. A comparative silence ensued. Lady Ingram thought it “le cas” to wring her hands: which she did accordingly. Miss Mary declared she felt, for her part, she never dared venture. Amy and Louisa Eshton tittered under their breath, and looked a little frightened. The minutes passed very slowly: fifteen were counted before the library-door again opened. Miss Ingram returned to us through the arch. Would she laugh? Would she take it as a joke? All eyes met her with a glance of eager curiosity, and she met all eyes with one of rebuff and coldness; she looked neither flurried nor merry: she walked stiffly to her seat, and took it in silence. “Well, Blanche?” said Lord Ingram. “What did she say, sister?” asked Mary. “What did you think? How do you feel? Is she a real fortune-teller?” demanded the Misses Eshton. “Now, now, good people,” returned Miss Ingram, “don’t press upon me. Really your organs of wonder and credulity are easily excited: you seem, by the importance of you all—my good mama included—ascribe to this matter, absolutely to believe we have a genuine witch in the house, who is in close alliance with the old gentleman. I have seen a gipsy vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of palmistry and told me what such people usually tell. My whim is gratified; and now I think Mr. Eshton will do well to put the hag in the stocks to-morrow morning, as he threatened.” Miss Ingram took a book, leant back in her chair, and so declined further conversation. I watched her for nearly half-an-hour: during all that time she never turned a page, and her face grew momently darker, more dissatisfied, and more sourly expressive of disappointment. She had obviously not heard anything to her advantage: and it seemed to me, from her prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity, that she herself, notwithstanding her professed indifference, attached undue importance to whatever revelations had been made her. During all that time she never turned a page Meantime, Mary Ingram, Amy and Louisa Eshton, declared they dared not go alone; and yet they all wished to go. A negotiation was opened through the medium of the ambassador, Sam; and after much pacing to and fro, till, I think, the said Sam’s calves must have ached with the exercise, permission was at last, with great difficulty, extorted from the rigorous Sibyl, for the three to wait upon her in a body. Their visit was not so still as Miss Ingram’s had been: we heard hysterical giggling and little shrieks proceeding from the library; and at the end of about twenty minutes they burst the door open, and came running across the hall, as if they were half-scared out of their wits. “I am sure she is something not right!” they cried, one and all. “She told us such things! She knows all about us!” and they sank breathless into the various seats the gentlemen hastened to bring them. Pressed for further explanation, they declared she had told them of things they had said and done when they were mere children; described books and ornaments they had in their boudoirs at home: keepsakes that different relations had presented to them. They affirmed that she had even divined their thoughts, and had whispered in the ear of each the name of the person she liked best in the world, and informed them of what they most wished for. Here the gentlemen interposed with earnest petitions to be further enlightened on these two last-named points; but they got only blushes, ejaculations, tremors, and titters, in return for their importunity. The matrons, meantime, offered vinaigrettes and wielded fans; and again and again reiterated the expression of their concern that their warning had not been taken in time; and the elder gentlemen laughed, and the younger urged their services on the agitated fair ones. In the midst of the tumult, and while my eyes and ears were fully engaged in the scene before me, I heard a hem close at my elbow: I turned, and saw Sam. “If you please, miss, the gipsy declares that there is another young single lady in the room who has not been to her yet, and she swears she will not go till she has seen all. I thought it must be you: there is no one else for it. What shall I tell her?” “Oh, I will go by all means,” I answered: and I was glad of the unexpected opportunity to gratify my much-excited curiosity. I slipped out of the room, unobserved by any eye—for the company were gathered in one mass about the trembling trio just returned—and I closed the door quietly behind me. “If you like, miss,” said Sam, “I’ll wait in the hall for you; and if she frightens you, just call and I’ll come in.” “No, Sam, return to the kitchen: I am not in the least afraid.” Nor was I; but I was a good deal interested and excited. ', 'The library looked tranquil enough as I entered it, and the Sibyl—if Sibyl she were—was seated snugly enough in an easy-chair at the chimney-corner. She had on a red cloak and a black bonnet: or rather, a broad-brimmed gipsy hat, tied down with a striped handkerchief under her chin. An extinguished candle stood on the table; she was bending over the fire, and seemed reading in a little black book, like a prayer-book, by the light of the blaze: she muttered the words to herself, as most old women do, while she read; she did not desist immediately on my entrance: it appeared she wished to finish a paragraph. I stood on the rug and warmed my hands, which were rather cold with sitting at a distance from the drawing-room fire. I felt now as composed as ever I did in my life: there was nothing indeed in the gipsy’s appearance to trouble one’s calm. She shut her book and slowly looked up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as she raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and black: elf-locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed under her chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye confronted me at once, with a bold and direct gaze. “Well, and you want your fortune told?” she said, in a voice as decided as her glance, as harsh as her features. “I don’t care about it, mother; you may please yourself: but I ought to warn you, I have no faith.” “It’s like your impudence to say so: I expected it of you; I heard it in your step as you crossed the threshold.” “Did you? You’ve a quick ear.” “I have; and a quick eye and a quick brain.” “You need them all in your trade.” “I do; especially when I’ve customers like you to deal with. Why don’t you tremble?” “I’m not cold.” “Why don’t you turn pale?” “I am not sick.” “Why don’t you consult my art?” “I’m not silly.” The old crone “nichered” a laugh under her bonnet and bandage; she then drew out a short black pipe, and lighting it began to smoke. Having indulged a while in this sedative, she raised her bent body, took the pipe from her lips, and while gazing steadily at the fire, said very deliberately— “You are cold; you are sick; and you are silly.” “Prove it,” I rejoined. “I will, in few words. You are cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you.” She again put her short black pipe to her lips, and renewed her smoking with vigour. “You might say all that to almost any one who you knew lived as a solitary dependent in a great house.” “I might say it to almost any one: but would it be true of almost any one?” “In my circumstances.” “Yes; just so, in _your_ circumstances: but find me another precisely placed as you are.” “It would be easy to find you thousands.” “You could scarcely find me one. If you knew it, you are peculiarly situated: very near happiness; yes, within reach of it. The materials are all prepared; there only wants a movement to combine them. Chance laid them somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss results.” “I don’t understand enigmas. I never could guess a riddle in my life.” “If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm.” “And I must cross it with silver, I suppose?” “To be sure.” I gave her a shilling: she put it into an old stocking-foot which she took out of her pocket, and having tied it round and returned it, she told me to hold out my hand. I did. She approached her face to the palm, and pored over it without touching it. “It is too fine,” said she. “I can make nothing of such a hand as that; almost without lines: besides, what is in a palm? Destiny is not written there.” “I believe you,” said I. “No,” she continued, “it is in the face: on the forehead, about the eyes, in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head.” “Ah! now you are coming to reality,” I said, as I obeyed her. “I shall begin to put some faith in you presently.” I knelt within half a yard of her. She stirred the fire, so that a ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the glare, however, as she sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: mine, it illumined. “I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night,” she said, when she had examined me a while. “I wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern: just as little sympathetic communion passing between you and them as if they were really mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual substance.” “I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad.” “Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with whispers of the future?” “Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my earnings to set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself.” “A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on: and sitting in that window-seat (you see I know your habits)—” “You have learned them from the servants.” “Ah! you think yourself sharp. Well, perhaps I have: to speak truth, I have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Poole—” I started to my feet when I heard the name. “You have—have you?” thought I; “there is diablerie in the business after all, then!” “Don’t be alarmed,” continued the strange being; “she’s a safe hand is Mrs. Poole: close and quiet; any one may repose confidence in her. But, as I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of nothing but your future school? Have you no present interest in any of the company who occupy the sofas and chairs before you? Is there not one face you study? one figure whose movements you follow with at least curiosity?” “I like to observe all the faces and all the figures.” “But do you never single one from the rest—or it may be, two?” “I do frequently; when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling a tale: it amuses me to watch them.” “What tale do you like best to hear?” “Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme—courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe—marriage.” “And do you like that monotonous theme?” “Positively, I don’t care about it: it is nothing to me.” “Nothing to you? When a lady, young and full of life and health, charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank and fortune, sits and smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you—” “I what?” “You know—and perhaps think well of.” “I don’t know the gentlemen here. I have scarcely interchanged a syllable with one of them; and as to thinking well of them, I consider some respectable, and stately, and middle-aged, and others young, dashing, handsome, and lively: but certainly they are all at liberty to be the recipients of whose smiles they please, without my feeling disposed to consider the transaction of any moment to me.” “You don’t know the gentlemen here? You have not exchanged a syllable with one of them? Will you say that of the master of the house!” “He is not at home.” “A profound remark! A most ingenious quibble! He went to Millcote this morning, and will be back here to-night or to-morrow: does that circumstance exclude him from the list of your acquaintance—blot him, as it were, out of existence?” “No; but I can scarcely see what Mr. Rochester has to do with the theme you had introduced.” “I was talking of ladies smiling in the eyes of gentlemen; and of late so many smiles have been shed into Mr. Rochester’s eyes that they overflow like two cups filled above the brim: have you never remarked that?” “Mr. Rochester has a right to enjoy the society of his guests.” “No question about his right: but have you never observed that, of all the tales told here about matrimony, Mr. Rochester has been favoured with the most lively and the most continuous?” “The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator.” I said this rather to myself than to the gipsy, whose strange talk, voice, manner, had by this time wrapped me in a kind of dream. One unexpected sentence came from her lips after another, till I got involved in a web of mystification; and wondered what unseen spirit had been sitting for weeks by my heart watching its workings and taking record of every pulse. “Eagerness of a listener!” repeated she: “yes; Mr. Rochester has sat by the hour, his ear inclined to the fascinating lips that took such delight in their task of communicating; and Mr. Rochester was so willing to receive and looked so grateful for the pastime given him; you have noticed this?” “Grateful! I cannot remember detecting gratitude in his face.” “Detecting! You have analysed, then. And what did you detect, if not gratitude?” I said nothing. “You have seen love: have you not?—and, looking forward, you have seen him married, and beheld his bride happy?” “Humph! Not exactly. Your witch’s skill is rather at fault sometimes.” “What the devil have you seen, then?” “Never mind: I came here to inquire, not to confess. Is it known that Mr. Rochester is to be married?” “Yes; and to the beautiful Miss Ingram.” “Shortly?” “Appearances would warrant that conclusion: and, no doubt (though, with an audacity that wants chastising out of you, you seem to question it), they will be a superlatively happy pair. He must love such a handsome, noble, witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not his person, at least his purse. I know she considers the Rochester estate eligible to the last degree; though (God pardon me!) I told her something on that point about an hour ago which made her look wondrous grave: the corners of her mouth fell half an inch. I would advise her blackaviced suitor to look out: if another comes, with a longer or clearer rent-roll,—he’s dished—” “But, mother, I did not come to hear Mr. Rochester’s fortune: I came to hear my own; and you have told me nothing of it.” “Your fortune is yet doubtful: when I examined your face, one trait contradicted another. Chance has meted you a measure of happiness: that I know. I knew it before I came here this evening. She has laid it carefully on one side for you. I saw her do it. It depends on yourself to stretch out your hand, and take it up: but whether you will do so, is the problem I study. Kneel again on the rug.” “Don’t keep me long; the fire scorches me.” She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in her chair I knelt. She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in her chair. She began muttering,— “The flame flickers in the eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft and full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon: it is susceptible; impression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases to smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness. It turns from me; it will not suffer further scrutiny; it seems to deny, by a mocking glance, the truth of the discoveries I have already made,—to disown the charge both of sensibility and chagrin: its pride and reserve only confirm me in my opinion. The eye is favourable. “As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection for its interlocutor. That feature too is propitious. “I see no enemy to a fortunate issue but in the brow; and that brow professes to say,—‘I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.’ The forehead declares, ‘Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.’ “Well said, forehead; your declaration shall be respected. I have formed my plans—right plans I deem them—and in them I have attended to the claims of conscience, the counsels of reason. I know how soon youth would fade and bloom perish, if, in the cup of bliss offered, but one dreg of shame, or one flavour of remorse were detected; and I do not want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution—such is not my taste. I wish to foster, not to blight—to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood—no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet—That will do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this moment _ad infinitum_; but I dare not. So far I have governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore I would act; but further might try me beyond my strength. Rise, Miss Eyre: leave me; ‘the play is played out.’” Where was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had I been dreaming? Did I dream still? The old woman’s voice had changed: her accent, her gesture, and all were familiar to me as my own face in a glass—as the speech of my own tongue. I got up, but did not go. I looked; I stirred the fire, and I looked again: but she drew her bonnet and her bandage closer about her face, and again beckoned me to depart. The flame illuminated her hand stretched out: roused now, and on the alert for discoveries, I at once noticed that hand. It was no more the withered limb of eld than my own; it was a rounded supple member, with smooth fingers, symmetrically turned; a broad ring flashed on the little finger, and stooping forward, I looked at it, and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times before. Again I looked at the face; which was no longer turned from me—on the contrary, the bonnet was doffed, the bandage displaced, the head advanced. “Well, Jane, do you know me?” asked the familiar voice. “Only take off the red cloak, sir, and then—” “But the string is in a knot—help me.” “Break it, sir.” “There, then—‘Off, ye lendings!’” And Mr. Rochester stepped out of his disguise. “Now, sir, what a strange idea!” “But well carried out, eh? Don’t you think so?” “With the ladies you must have managed well.” “But not with you?” “You did not act the character of a gipsy with me.” “What character did I act? My own?” “No; some unaccountable one. In short, I believe you have been trying to draw me out—or in; you have been talking nonsense to make me talk nonsense. It is scarcely fair, sir.” “Do you forgive me, Jane?” “I cannot tell till I have thought it all over. If, on reflection, I find I have fallen into no great absurdity, I shall try to forgive you; but it was not right.” “Oh, you have been very correct—very careful, very sensible.” I reflected, and thought, on the whole, I had. It was a comfort; but, indeed, I had been on my guard almost from the beginning of the interview. Something of masquerade I suspected. I knew gipsies and fortune-tellers did not express themselves as this seeming old woman had expressed herself; besides I had noted her feigned voice, her anxiety to conceal her features. But my mind had been running on Grace Poole—that living enigma, that mystery of mysteries, as I considered her. I had never thought of Mr. Rochester. “Well,” said he, “what are you musing about? What does that grave smile signify?” “Wonder and self-congratulation, sir. I have your permission to retire now, I suppose?” “No; stay a moment; and tell me what the people in the drawing-room yonder are doing.” “Discussing the gipsy, I daresay.” “Sit down!—Let me hear what they said about me.” “I had better not stay long, sir; it must be near eleven o’clock. Oh, are you aware, Mr. Rochester, that a stranger has arrived here since you left this morning?” “A stranger!—no; who can it be? I expected no one; is he gone?” “No; he said he had known you long, and that he could take the liberty of installing himself here till you returned.” “The devil he did! Did he give his name?” “His name is Mason, sir; and he comes from the West Indies; from Spanish Town, in Jamaica, I think.” Mr. Rochester was standing near me; he had taken my hand, as if to lead me to a chair. As I spoke he gave my wrist a convulsive grip; the smile on his lips froze: apparently a spasm caught his breath. “Mason!—the West Indies!” he said, in the tone one might fancy a speaking automaton to enounce its single words; “Mason!—the West Indies!” he reiterated; and he went over the syllables three times, growing, in the intervals of speaking, whiter than ashes: he hardly seemed to know what he was doing. “Do you feel ill, sir?” I inquired. “Jane, I’ve got a blow; I’ve got a blow, Jane!” He staggered. “Oh, lean on me, sir.” “Jane, you offered me your shoulder once before; let me have it now.” “Yes, sir, yes; and my arm.” He sat down, and made me sit beside him. Holding my hand in both his own, he chafed it; gazing on me, at the same time, with the most troubled and dreary look. “My little friend!” said he, “I wish I were in a quiet island with only you; and trouble, and danger, and hideous recollections removed from me.” “Can I help you, sir?—I’d give my life to serve you.” “Jane, if aid is wanted, I’ll seek it at your hands; I promise you that.” “Thank you, sir. Tell me what to do,—I’ll try, at least, to do it.” “Fetch me now, Jane, a glass of wine from the dining-room: they will be at supper there; and tell me if Mason is with them, and what he is doing.” I went. I found all the party in the dining-room at supper, as Mr. Rochester had said; they were not seated at table,—the supper was arranged on the sideboard; each had taken what he chose, and they stood about here and there in groups, their plates and glasses in their hands. Every one seemed in high glee; laughter and conversation were general and animated. Mr. Mason stood near the fire, talking to Colonel and Mrs. Dent, and appeared as merry as any of them. I filled a wine-glass (I saw Miss Ingram watch me frowningly as I did so: she thought I was taking a liberty, I daresay), and I returned to the library. Mr. Rochester’s extreme pallor had disappeared, and he looked once more firm and stern. He took the glass from my hand. “Here is to your health, ministrant spirit!” he said. He swallowed the contents and returned it to me. “What are they doing, Jane?” “Laughing and talking, sir.” “They don’t look grave and mysterious, as if they had heard something strange?” “Not at all: they are full of jests and gaiety.” “And Mason?” “He was laughing too.” “If all these people came in a body and spat at me, what would you do, Jane?” “Turn them out of the room, sir, if I could.” He half smiled. “But if I were to go to them, and they only looked at me coldly, and whispered sneeringly amongst each other, and then dropped off and left me one by one, what then? Would you go with them?” “I rather think not, sir: I should have more pleasure in staying with you.” “To comfort me?” “Yes, sir, to comfort you, as well as I could.” “And if they laid you under a ban for adhering to me?” “I, probably, should know nothing about their ban; and if I did, I should care nothing about it.” “Then, you could dare censure for my sake?” “I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence; as you, I am sure, do.” “Go back now into the room; step quietly up to Mason, and whisper in his ear that Mr. Rochester is come and wishes to see him: show him in here and then leave me.” “Yes, sir.” I did his behest. The company all stared at me as I passed straight among them. I sought Mr. Mason, delivered the message, and preceded him from the room: I ushered him into the library, and then I went upstairs. At a late hour, after I had been in bed some time, I heard the visitors repair to their chambers: I distinguished Mr. Rochester’s voice, and heard him say, “This way, Mason; this is your room.” He spoke cheerfully: the gay tones set my heart at ease. I was soon asleep. ', 'I had forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to let down my window-blind. The consequence was, that when the moon, which was full and bright (for the night was fine), came in her course to that space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me. Awaking in the dead of night, I opened my eyes on her disk—silver-white and crystal clear. It was beautiful, but too solemn: I half rose, and stretched my arm to draw the curtain. Good God! What a cry! The night—its silence—its rest, was rent in twain by a savage, a sharp, a shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall. My pulse stopped: my heart stood still; my stretched arm was paralysed. The cry died, and was not renewed. Indeed, whatever being uttered that fearful shriek could not soon repeat it: not the widest-winged condor on the Andes could, twice in succession, send out such a yell from the cloud shrouding his eyrie. The thing delivering such utterance must rest ere it could repeat the effort. It came out of the third storey; for it passed overhead. And overhead—yes, in the room just above my chamber-ceiling—I now heard a struggle: a deadly one it seemed from the noise; and a half-smothered voice shouted— “Help! help! help!” three times rapidly. “Will no one come?” it cried; and then, while the staggering and stamping went on wildly, I distinguished through plank and plaster:— “Rochester! Rochester! for God’s sake, come!” A chamber-door opened: some one ran, or rushed, along the gallery. Another step stamped on the flooring above and something fell; and there was silence. I had put on some clothes, though horror shook all my limbs; I issued from my apartment. The sleepers were all aroused: ejaculations, terrified murmurs sounded in every room; door after door unclosed; one looked out and another looked out; the gallery filled. Gentlemen and ladies alike had quitted their beds; and “Oh! what is it?”—“Who is hurt?”—“What has happened?”—“Fetch a light!”—“Is it fire?”—“Are there robbers?”—“Where shall we run?” was demanded confusedly on all hands. But for the moonlight they would have been in complete darkness. They ran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed, some stumbled: the confusion was inextricable. “Where the devil is Rochester?” cried Colonel Dent. “I cannot find him in his bed.” “Here! here!” was shouted in return. “Be composed, all of you: I’m coming.” And the door at the end of the gallery opened, and Mr. Rochester advanced with a candle: he had just descended from the upper storey. One of the ladies ran to him directly; she seized his arm: it was Miss Ingram. “What awful event has taken place?” said she. “Speak! let us know the worst at once!” “But don’t pull me down or strangle me,” he replied: for the Misses Eshton were clinging about him now; and the two dowagers, in vast white wrappers, were bearing down on him like ships in full sail. “All’s right!—all’s right!” he cried. “It’s a mere rehearsal of Much Ado about Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous.” And dangerous he looked: his black eyes darted sparks. Calming himself by an effort, he added— “A servant has had the nightmare; that is all. She’s an excitable, nervous person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or something of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright. Now, then, I must see you all back into your rooms; for, till the house is settled, she cannot be looked after. Gentlemen, have the goodness to set the ladies the example. Miss Ingram, I am sure you will not fail in evincing superiority to idle terrors. Amy and Louisa, return to your nests like a pair of doves, as you are. Mesdames” (to the dowagers), “you will take cold to a dead certainty, if you stay in this chill gallery any longer.” And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived to get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories. I did not wait to be ordered back to mine, but retreated unnoticed, as unnoticed I had left it. Not, however, to go to bed: on the contrary, I began and dressed myself carefully. The sounds I had heard after the scream, and the words that had been uttered, had probably been heard only by me; for they had proceeded from the room above mine: but they assured me that it was not a servant’s dream which had thus struck horror through the house; and that the explanation Mr. Rochester had given was merely an invention framed to pacify his guests. I dressed, then, to be ready for emergencies. When dressed, I sat a long time by the window looking out over the silent grounds and silvered fields and waiting for I knew not what. It seemed to me that some event must follow the strange cry, struggle, and call. No: stillness returned: each murmur and movement ceased gradually, and in about an hour Thornfield Hall was again as hushed as a desert. It seemed that sleep and night had resumed their empire. Meantime the moon declined: she was about to set. Not liking to sit in the cold and darkness, I thought I would lie down on my bed, dressed as I was. I left the window, and moved with little noise across the carpet; as I stooped to take off my shoes, a cautious hand tapped low at the door. “Am I wanted?” I asked. “Are you up?” asked the voice I expected to hear, viz., my master’s. “Yes, sir.” “And dressed?” “Yes.” “Come out, then, quietly.” I obeyed. Mr. Rochester stood in the gallery holding a light. “I want you,” he said: “come this way: take your time, and make no noise.” My slippers were thin: I could walk the matted floor as softly as a cat. He glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in the dark, low corridor of the fateful third storey: I had followed and stood at his side. “Have you a sponge in your room?” he asked in a whisper. “Yes, sir.” “Have you any salts—volatile salts?” “Yes.” “Go back and fetch both.” I returned, sought the sponge on the washstand, the salts in my drawer, and once more retraced my steps. He still waited; he held a key in his hand: approaching one of the small, black doors, he put it in the lock; he paused, and addressed me again. “You don’t turn sick at the sight of blood?” “I think I shall not: I have never been tried yet.” I felt a thrill while I answered him; but no coldness, and no faintness. “Just give me your hand,” he said: “it will not do to risk a fainting fit.” I put my fingers into his. “Warm and steady,” was his remark: he turned the key and opened the door. I saw a room I remembered to have seen before, the day Mrs. Fairfax showed me over the house: it was hung with tapestry; but the tapestry was now looped up in one part, and there was a door apparent, which had then been concealed. This door was open; a light shone out of the room within: I heard thence a snarling, snatching sound, almost like a dog quarrelling. Mr. Rochester, putting down his candle, said to me, “Wait a minute,” and he went forward to the inner apartment. A shout of laughter greeted his entrance; noisy at first, and terminating in Grace Poole’s own goblin ha! ha! _She_ then was there. He made some sort of arrangement without speaking, though I heard a low voice address him: he came out and closed the door behind him. “Here, Jane!” he said; and I walked round to the other side of a large bed, which with its drawn curtains concealed a considerable portion of the chamber. An easy-chair was near the bed-head: a man sat in it, dressed with the exception of his coat; he was still; his head leant back; his eyes were closed. Mr. Rochester held the candle over him; I recognised in his pale and seemingly lifeless face—the stranger, Mason: I saw too that his linen on one side, and one arm, was almost soaked in blood. “Hold the candle,” said Mr. Rochester, and I took it: he fetched a basin of water from the washstand: “Hold that,” said he. I obeyed. He took the sponge, dipped it in, and moistened the corpse-like face; he asked for my smelling-bottle, and applied it to the nostrils. Mr. Mason shortly unclosed his eyes; he groaned. Mr. Rochester opened the shirt of the wounded man, whose arm and shoulder were bandaged: he sponged away blood, trickling fast down. “Is there immediate danger?” murmured Mr. Mason. “Pooh! No—a mere scratch. Don’t be so overcome, man: bear up! I’ll fetch a surgeon for you now, myself: you’ll be able to be removed by morning, I hope. Jane,” he continued. “Sir?” “I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman, for an hour, or perhaps two hours: you will sponge the blood as I do when it returns: if he feels faint, you will put the glass of water on that stand to his lips, and your salts to his nose. You will not speak to him on any pretext—and—Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her: open your lips—agitate yourself—and I’ll not answer for the consequences.” Again the poor man groaned; he looked as if he dared not move; fear, either of death or of something else, appeared almost to paralyse him. Mr. Rochester put the now bloody sponge into my hand, and I proceeded to use it as he had done. He watched me a second, then saying, “Remember!—No conversation,” he left the room. I experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock, and the sound of his retreating step ceased to be heard. Here then I was in the third storey, fastened into one of its mystic cells; night around me; a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and hands; a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door: yes—that was appalling—the rest I could bear; but I shuddered at the thought of Grace Poole bursting out upon me. I must keep to my post, however. I must watch this ghastly countenance—these blue, still lips forbidden to unclose—these eyes now shut, now opening, now wandering through the room, now fixing on me, and ever glazed with the dulness of horror. I must dip my hand again and again in the basin of blood and water, and wipe away the trickling gore. I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my employment; the shadows darken on the wrought, antique tapestry round me, and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver strangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite—whose front, divided into twelve panels, bore, in grim design, the heads of the twelve apostles, each enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame; while above them at the top rose an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ. According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here or glanced there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, that bent his brow; now St. John’s long hair that waved; and anon the devilish face of Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed gathering life and threatening a revelation of the arch-traitor—of Satan himself—in his subordinate’s form. Amidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch: to listen for the movements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den. But since Mr. Rochester’s visit it seemed spellbound: all the night I heard but three sounds at three long intervals,—a step creak, a momentary renewal of the snarling, canine noise, and a deep human groan. Then my own thoughts worried me. What crime was this, that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner?—what mystery, that broke out now in fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night? What creature was it, that, masked in an ordinary woman’s face and shape, uttered the voice, now of a mocking demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey? And this man I bent over—this commonplace, quiet stranger—how had he become involved in the web of horror? and why had the Fury flown at him? What made him seek this quarter of the house at an untimely season, when he should have been asleep in bed? I had heard Mr. Rochester assign him an apartment below—what brought him here! And why, now, was he so tame under the violence or treachery done him? Why did he so quietly submit to the concealment Mr. Rochester enforced? Why _did_ Mr. Rochester enforce this concealment? His guest had been outraged, his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against; and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion! Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this. It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active energy of the other: whence then had arisen Mr. Rochester’s dismay when he heard of Mr. Mason’s arrival? Why had the mere name of this unresisting individual—whom his word now sufficed to control like a child—fallen on him, a few hours since, as a thunderbolt might fall on an oak? Oh! I could not forget his look and his paleness when he whispered: “Jane, I have got a blow—I have got a blow, Jane.” I could not forget how the arm had trembled which he rested on my shoulder: and it was no light matter which could thus bow the resolute spirit and thrill the vigorous frame of Fairfax Rochester. “When will he come? When will he come?” I cried inwardly, as the night lingered and lingered—as my bleeding patient drooped, moaned, sickened: and neither day nor aid arrived. I had, again and again, held the water to Mason’s white lips; again and again offered him the stimulating salts: my efforts seemed ineffectual: either bodily or mental suffering, or loss of blood, or all three combined, were fast prostrating his strength. He moaned so, and looked so weak, wild, and lost, I feared he was dying; and I might not even speak to him. The candle, wasted at last, went out; as it expired, I perceived streaks of grey light edging the window curtains: dawn was then approaching. Presently I heard Pilot bark far below, out of his distant kennel in the courtyard: hope revived. Nor was it unwarranted: in five minutes more the grating key, the yielding lock, warned me my watch was relieved. It could not have lasted more than two hours: many a week has seemed shorter. Mr. Rochester entered, and with him the surgeon he had been to fetch. “Now, Carter, be on the alert,” he said to this last: “I give you but half-an-hour for dressing the wound, fastening the bandages, getting the patient downstairs and all.” “But is he fit to move, sir?” “No doubt of it; it is nothing serious; he is nervous, his spirits must be kept up. Come, set to work.” Mr. Rochester drew back the thick curtain, drew up the holland blind, let in all the daylight he could; and I was surprised and cheered to see how far dawn was advanced: what rosy streaks were beginning to brighten the east. Then he approached Mason, whom the surgeon was already handling. “Now, my good fellow, how are you?” he asked. “She’s done for me, I fear,” was the faint reply. “Not a whit!—courage! This day fortnight you’ll hardly be a pin the worse of it: you’ve lost a little blood; that’s all. Carter, assure him there’s no danger.” “I can do that conscientiously,” said Carter, who had now undone the bandages; “only I wish I could have got here sooner: he would not have bled so much—but how is this? The flesh on the shoulder is torn as well as cut. This wound was not done with a knife: there have been teeth here!” “She bit me,” he murmured. “She worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got the knife from her.” “You should not have yielded: you should have grappled with her at once,” said Mr. Rochester. “But under such circumstances, what could one do?” returned Mason. “Oh, it was frightful!” he added, shuddering. “And I did not expect it: she looked so quiet at first.” “I warned you,” was his friend’s answer; “I said—be on your guard when you go near her. Besides, you might have waited till to-morrow, and had me with you: it was mere folly to attempt the interview to-night, and alone.” “I thought I could have done some good.” “You thought! you thought! Yes, it makes me impatient to hear you: but, however, you have suffered, and are likely to suffer enough for not taking my advice; so I’ll say no more. Carter—hurry!—hurry! The sun will soon rise, and I must have him off.” “Directly, sir; the shoulder is just bandaged. I must look to this other wound in the arm: she has had her teeth here too, I think.” “She sucked the blood: she said she’d drain my heart,” said Mason. I saw Mr. Rochester shudder: a singularly marked expression of disgust, horror, hatred, warped his countenance almost to distortion; but he only said— “Come, be silent, Richard, and never mind her gibberish: don’t repeat it.” “I wish I could forget it,” was the answer. “You will when you are out of the country: when you get back to Spanish Town, you may think of her as dead and buried—or rather, you need not think of her at all.” “Impossible to forget this night!” “It is not impossible: have some energy, man. You thought you were as dead as a herring two hours since, and you are all alive and talking now. There!—Carter has done with you or nearly so; I’ll make you decent in a trice. Jane” (he turned to me for the first time since his re-entrance), “take this key: go down into my bedroom, and walk straight forward into my dressing-room: open the top drawer of the wardrobe and take out a clean shirt and neck-handkerchief: bring them here; and be nimble.” I went; sought the repository he had mentioned, found the articles named, and returned with them. “Now,” said he, “go to the other side of the bed while I order his toilet; but don’t leave the room: you may be wanted again.” I retired as directed. “Was anybody stirring below when you went down, Jane?” inquired Mr. Rochester presently. “No, sir; all was very still.” “We shall get you off cannily, Dick: and it will be better, both for your sake, and for that of the poor creature in yonder. I have striven long to avoid exposure, and I should not like it to come at last. Here, Carter, help him on with his waist-coat. Where did you leave your furred cloak? You can’t travel a mile without that, I know, in this damned cold climate. In your room?—Jane, run down to Mr. Mason’s room,—the one next mine,—and fetch a cloak you will see there.” Again I ran, and again returned, bearing an immense mantle lined and edged with fur. “Now, I’ve another errand for you,” said my untiring master; “you must away to my room again. What a mercy you are shod with velvet, Jane!—a clod-hopping messenger would never do at this juncture. You must open the middle drawer of my toilet-table and take out a little phial and a little glass you will find there,—quick!” I flew thither and back, bringing the desired vessels. “That’s well! Now, doctor, I shall take the liberty of administering a dose myself, on my own responsibility. I got this cordial at Rome, of an Italian charlatan—a fellow you would have kicked, Carter. It is not a thing to be used indiscriminately, but it is good upon occasion: as now, for instance. Jane, a little water.” He held out the tiny glass, and I half filled it from the water-bottle on the washstand. “That will do;—now wet the lip of the phial.” I did so; he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and presented it to Mason. “Drink, Richard: it will give you the heart you lack, for an hour or so.” “But will it hurt me?—is it inflammatory?” “Drink! drink! drink!” Mr. Mason obeyed, because it was evidently useless to resist. He was dressed now: he still looked pale, but he was no longer gory and sullied. Mr. Rochester let him sit three minutes after he had swallowed the liquid; he then took his arm— “Now I am sure you can get on your feet,” he said—“try.” The patient rose. “Carter, take him under the other shoulder. Be of good cheer, Richard; step out—that’s it!” “I do feel better,” remarked Mr. Mason. “I am sure you do. Now, Jane, trip on before us away to the backstairs; unbolt the side-passage door, and tell the driver of the post-chaise you will see in the yard—or just outside, for I told him not to drive his rattling wheels over the pavement—to be ready; we are coming: and, Jane, if any one is about, come to the foot of the stairs and hem.” It was by this time half-past five, and the sun was on the point of rising; but I found the kitchen still dark and silent. The side-passage door was fastened; I opened it with as little noise as possible: all the yard was quiet; but the gates stood wide open, and there was a post-chaise, with horses ready harnessed, and driver seated on the box, stationed outside. I approached him, and said the gentlemen were coming; he nodded: then I looked carefully round and listened. The stillness of early morning slumbered everywhere; the curtains were yet drawn over the servants’ chamber windows; little birds were just twittering in the blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs drooped like white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the carriage horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables: all else was still. The gentlemen now appeared. Mason, supported by Mr. Rochester and the surgeon, seemed to walk with tolerable ease: they assisted him into the chaise; Carter followed. “Take care of him,” said Mr. Rochester to the latter, “and keep him at your house till he is quite well: I shall ride over in a day or two to see how he gets on. Richard, how is it with you?” “The fresh air revives me, Fairfax.” “Leave the window open on his side, Carter; there is no wind—good-bye, Dick.” “Fairfax—” “Well what is it?” “Let her be taken care of; let her be treated as tenderly as may be: let her—” he stopped and burst into tears. “I do my best; and have done it, and will do it,” was the answer: he shut up the chaise door, and the vehicle drove away. “Yet would to God there was an end of all this!” added Mr. Rochester, as he closed and barred the heavy yard-gates. This done, he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a door in the wall bordering the orchard. I, supposing he had done with me, prepared to return to the house; again, however, I heard him call “Jane!” He had opened the portal and stood at it, waiting for me. “Come where there is some freshness, for a few moments,” he said; “that house is a mere dungeon: don’t you feel it so?” “It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir.” “The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes,” he answered; “and you see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now _here_” (he pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered) “all is real, sweet, and pure.” He strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple trees, pear trees, and cherry trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all sorts of old-fashioned flowers, stocks, sweet-williams, primroses, pansies, mingled with southernwood, sweet-briar, and various fragrant herbs. They were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams, followed by a lovely spring morning, could make them: the sun was just entering the dappled east, and his light illumined the wreathed and dewy orchard trees and shone down the quiet walks under them. “Jane, will you have a flower?” He gathered a half-blown rose, the first on the bush, and offered it to me. “Thank you, sir.” “Do you like this sunrise, Jane? That sky with its high and light clouds which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm—this placid and balmly atmosphere?” “I do, very much.” “You have passed a strange night, Jane.” “Yes, sir.” “And it has made you look pale—were you afraid when I left you alone with Mason?” “I was afraid of some one coming out of the inner room.” “But I had fastened the door—I had the key in my pocket: I should have been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb—my pet lamb—so near a wolf’s den, unguarded: you were safe.” “Will Grace Poole live here still, sir?” “Oh yes! don’t trouble your head about her—put the thing out of your thoughts.” “Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays.” “Never fear—I will take care of myself.” “Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now, sir?” “I cannot vouch for that till Mason is out of England: nor even then. To live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spue fire any day.” “But Mr. Mason seems a man easily led. Your influence, sir, is evidently potent with him: he will never set you at defiance or wilfully injure you.” “Oh, no! Mason will not defy me; nor, knowing it, will he hurt me—but, unintentionally, he might in a moment, by one careless word, deprive me, if not of life, yet for ever of happiness.” “Tell him to be cautious, sir: let him know what you fear, and show him how to avert the danger.” He laughed sardonically, hastily took my hand, and as hastily threw it from him. “If I could do that, simpleton, where would the danger be? Annihilated in a moment. Ever since I have known Mason, I have only had to say to him ‘Do that,’ and the thing has been done. But I cannot give him orders in this case: I cannot say ‘Beware of harming me, Richard;’ for it is imperative that I should keep him ignorant that harm to me is possible. Now you look puzzled; and I will puzzle you further. You are my little friend, are you not?” “I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right.” “Precisely: I see you do. I see genuine contentment in your gait and mien, your eye and face, when you are helping me and pleasing me—working for me, and with me, in, as you characteristically say, ‘_all that is right_:’ for if I bid you do what you thought wrong, there would be no light-footed running, no neat-handed alacrity, no lively glance and animated complexion. My friend would then turn to me, quiet and pale, and would say, ‘No, sir; that is impossible: I cannot do it, because it is wrong;’ and would become immutable as a fixed star. Well, you too have power over me, and may injure me: yet I dare not show you where I am vulnerable, lest, faithful and friendly as you are, you should transfix me at once.” “If you have no more to fear from Mr. Mason than you have from me, sir, you are very safe.” “God grant it may be so! Here, Jane, is an arbour; sit down.” The arbour was an arch in the wall, lined with ivy; it contained a rustic seat. Mr. Rochester took it, leaving room, however, for me: but I stood before him. “Sit,” he said; “the bench is long enough for two. You don’t hesitate to take a place at my side, do you? Is that wrong, Jane?” I answered him by assuming it: to refuse would, I felt, have been unwise. “Now, my little friend, while the sun drinks the dew—while all the flowers in this old garden awake and expand, and the birds fetch their young ones’ breakfast out of the Thornfield, and the early bees do their first spell of work—I’ll put a case to you, which you must endeavour to suppose your own: but first, look at me, and tell me you are at ease, and not fearing that I err in detaining you, or that you err in staying.” “No, sir; I am content.” “Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:—suppose you were no longer a girl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards; imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence. Mind, I don’t say a _crime_; I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty act, which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law: my word is _error_. The results of what you have done become in time to you utterly insupportable; you take measures to obtain relief: unusual measures, but neither unlawful nor culpable. Still you are miserable; for hope has quitted you on the very confines of life: your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which you feel will not leave it till the time of setting. Bitter and base associations have become the sole food of your memory: you wander here and there, seeking rest in exile: happiness in pleasure—I mean in heartless, sensual pleasure—such as dulls intellect and blights feeling. Heart-weary and soul-withered, you come home after years of voluntary banishment: you make a new acquaintance—how or where no matter: you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered; and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such society revives, regenerates: you feel better days come back—higher wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom—a mere conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your judgment approves?” He paused for an answer: and what was I to say? Oh, for some good spirit to suggest a judicious and satisfactory response! Vain aspiration! The west wind whispered in the ivy round me; but no gentle Ariel borrowed its breath as a medium of speech: the birds sang in the tree-tops; but their song, however sweet, was inarticulate. Again Mr. Rochester propounded his query: “Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man justified in daring the world’s opinion, in order to attach to him for ever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own peace of mind and regeneration of life?” “Sir,” I answered, “a wanderer’s repose or a sinner’s reformation should never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die; philosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals for strength to amend and solace to heal.” “But the instrument—the instrument! God, who does the work, ordains the instrument. I have myself—I tell it you without parable—been a worldly, dissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in—” He paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling. I almost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to catch the suspended revelation; but they would have had to wait many minutes—so long was the silence protracted. At last I looked up at the tardy speaker: he was looking eagerly at me. “Little friend,” said he, in quite a changed tone—while his face changed too, losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming harsh and sarcastic—“you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram: don’t you think if I married her she would regenerate me with a vengeance?” He got up instantly, went quite to the other end of the walk, and when he came back he was humming a tune. “Jane, Jane,” said he, stopping before me, “you are quite pale with your vigils: don’t you curse me for disturbing your rest?” “Curse you? No, sir.” “Shake hands in confirmation of the word. What cold fingers! They were warmer last night when I touched them at the door of the mysterious chamber. Jane, when will you watch with me again?” “Whenever I can be useful, sir.” “For instance, the night before I am married! I am sure I shall not be able to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company? To you I can talk of my lovely one: for now you have seen her and know her.” “Yes, sir.” “She’s a rare one, is she not, Jane?” “Yes, sir.” “A strapper—a real strapper, Jane: big, brown, and buxom; with hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had. Bless me! there’s Dent and Lynn in the stables! Go in by the shrubbery, through that wicket.” As I went one way, he went another, and I heard him in the yard, saying cheerfully— “Mason got the start of you all this morning; he was gone before sunrise: I rose at four to see him off.” ', 'Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man. When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie Leaven say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little child; and that to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to one’s self or one’s kin. The saying might have worn out of my memory, had not a circumstance immediately followed which served indelibly to fix it there. The next day Bessie was sent for home to the deathbed of her little sister. Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident; for during the past week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not brought with it a dream of an infant, which I sometimes hushed in my arms, sometimes dandled on my knee, sometimes watched playing with daisies on a lawn, or again, dabbling its hands in running water. It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing one the next: now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me; but whatever mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber. I did not like this iteration of one idea—this strange recurrence of one image, and I grew nervous as bedtime approached and the hour of the vision drew near. It was from companionship with this baby-phantom I had been roused on that moonlight night when I heard the cry; and it was on the afternoon of the day following I was summoned downstairs by a message that some one wanted me in Mrs. Fairfax’s room. On repairing thither, I found a man waiting for me, having the appearance of a gentleman’s servant: he was dressed in deep mourning, and the hat he held in his hand was surrounded with a crape band. “I daresay you hardly remember me, Miss,” he said, rising as I entered; “but my name is Leaven: I lived coachman with Mrs. Reed when you were at Gateshead, eight or nine years since, and I live there still.” “Oh, Robert! how do you do? I remember you very well: you used to give me a ride sometimes on Miss Georgiana’s bay pony. And how is Bessie? You are married to Bessie?” “Yes, Miss: my wife is very hearty, thank you; she brought me another little one about two months since—we have three now—and both mother and child are thriving.” “And are the family well at the house, Robert?” “I am sorry I can’t give you better news of them, Miss: they are very badly at present—in great trouble.” “I hope no one is dead,” I said, glancing at his black dress. He too looked down at the crape round his hat and replied— “Mr. John died yesterday was a week, at his chambers in London.” “Mr. John?” “Yes.” “And how does his mother bear it?” “Why, you see, Miss Eyre, it is not a common mishap: his life has been very wild: these last three years he gave himself up to strange ways, and his death was shocking.” “I heard from Bessie he was not doing well.” “Doing well! He could not do worse: he ruined his health and his estate amongst the worst men and the worst women. He got into debt and into jail: his mother helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he returned to his old companions and habits. His head was not strong: the knaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard. He came down to Gateshead about three weeks ago and wanted missis to give up all to him. Missis refused: her means have long been much reduced by his extravagance; so he went back again, and the next news was that he was dead. How he died, God knows!—they say he killed himself.” I was silent: the tidings were frightful. Robert Leaven resumed— “Missis had been out of health herself for some time: she had got very stout, but was not strong with it; and the loss of money and fear of poverty were quite breaking her down. The information about Mr. John’s death and the manner of it came too suddenly: it brought on a stroke. She was three days without speaking; but last Tuesday she seemed rather better: she appeared as if she wanted to say something, and kept making signs to my wife and mumbling. It was only yesterday morning, however, that Bessie understood she was pronouncing your name; and at last she made out the words, ‘Bring Jane—fetch Jane Eyre: I want to speak to her.’ Bessie is not sure whether she is in her right mind, or means anything by the words; but she told Miss Reed and Miss Georgiana, and advised them to send for you. The young ladies put it off at first; but their mother grew so restless, and said, ‘Jane, Jane,’ so many times, that at last they consented. I left Gateshead yesterday: and if you can get ready, Miss, I should like to take you back with me early to-morrow morning.” “Yes, Robert, I shall be ready: it seems to me that I ought to go.” “I think so too, Miss. Bessie said she was sure you would not refuse: but I suppose you will have to ask leave before you can get off?” “Yes; and I will do it now;” and having directed him to the servants’ hall, and recommended him to the care of John’s wife, and the attentions of John himself, I went in search of Mr. Rochester. He was not in any of the lower rooms; he was not in the yard, the stables, or the grounds. I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had seen him;—yes: she believed he was playing billiards with Miss Ingram. To the billiard-room I hastened: the click of balls and the hum of voices resounded thence; Mr. Rochester, Miss Ingram, the two Misses Eshton, and their admirers, were all busied in the game. It required some courage to disturb so interesting a party; my errand, however, was one I could not defer, so I approached the master where he stood at Miss Ingram’s side. She turned as I drew near, and looked at me haughtily: her eyes seemed to demand, “What can the creeping creature want now?” and when I said, in a low voice, “Mr. Rochester,” she made a movement as if tempted to order me away. I remember her appearance at the moment—it was very graceful and very striking: she wore a morning robe of sky-blue crape; a gauzy azure scarf was twisted in her hair. She had been all animation with the game, and irritated pride did not lower the expression of her haughty lineaments. “Does that person want you?” she inquired of Mr. Rochester; and Mr. Rochester turned to see who the “person” was. He made a curious grimace—one of his strange and equivocal demonstrations—threw down his cue and followed me from the room. “Well, Jane?” he said, as he rested his back against the schoolroom door, which he had shut. “If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two.” “What to do?—where to go?” “To see a sick lady who has sent for me.” “What sick lady?—where does she live?” “At Gateshead; in ——shire.” “-shire? That is a hundred miles off! Who may she be that sends for people to see her that distance?” “Her name is Reed, sir—Mrs. Reed.” “Reed of Gateshead? There was a Reed of Gateshead, a magistrate.” “It is his widow, sir.” “And what have you to do with her? How do you know her?” “Mr. Reed was my uncle—my mother’s brother.” “The deuce he was! You never told me that before: you always said you had no relations.” “None that would own me, sir. Mr. Reed is dead, and his wife cast me off.” “Why?” “Because I was poor, and burdensome, and she disliked me.” “But Reed left children?—you must have cousins? Sir George Lynn was talking of a Reed of Gateshead yesterday, who, he said, was one of the veriest rascals on town; and Ingram was mentioning a Georgiana Reed of the same place, who was much admired for her beauty a season or two ago in London.” “John Reed is dead, too, sir: he ruined himself and half-ruined his family, and is supposed to have committed suicide. The news so shocked his mother that it brought on an apoplectic attack.” “And what good can you do her? Nonsense, Jane! I would never think of running a hundred miles to see an old lady who will, perhaps, be dead before you reach her: besides, you say she cast you off.” “Yes, sir, but that is long ago; and when her circumstances were very different: I could not be easy to neglect her wishes now.” “How long will you stay?” “As short a time as possible, sir.” “Promise me only to stay a week—” “I had better not pass my word: I might be obliged to break it.” “At all events you _will_ come back: you will not be induced under any pretext to take up a permanent residence with her?” “Oh, no! I shall certainly return if all be well.” “And who goes with you? You don’t travel a hundred miles alone.” “No, sir, she has sent her coachman.” “A person to be trusted?” “Yes, sir, he has lived ten years in the family.” Mr. Rochester meditated. “When do you wish to go?” “Early to-morrow morning, sir.” “Well, you must have some money; you can’t travel without money, and I daresay you have not much: I have given you no salary yet. How much have you in the world, Jane?” he asked, smiling. I drew out my purse; a meagre thing it was. “Five shillings, sir.” He took the purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as if its scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book: “Here,” said he, offering me a note; it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but fifteen. I told him I had no change. “I don’t want change; you know that. Take your wages.” I declined accepting more than was my due. He scowled at first; then, as if recollecting something, he said— “Right, right! Better not give you all now: you would, perhaps, stay away three months if you had fifty pounds. There are ten; is it not plenty?” “Yes, sir, but now you owe me five.” “Come back for it, then; I am your banker for forty pounds.” “Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention another matter of business to you while I have the opportunity.” “Matter of business? I am curious to hear it.” “You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly to be married?” “Yes; what then?” “In that case, sir, Adèle ought to go to school: I am sure you will perceive the necessity of it.” “To get her out of my bride’s way, who might otherwise walk over her rather too emphatically? There’s sense in the suggestion; not a doubt of it. Adèle, as you say, must go to school; and you, of course, must march straight to—the devil?” “I hope not, sir; but I must seek another situation somewhere.” “In course!” he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of features equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes. “And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by you to seek a place, I suppose?” “No, sir; I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me in asking favours of them—but I shall advertise.” “You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!” he growled. “At your peril you advertise! I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.” “And so have I, sir,” I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me. “I could not spare the money on any account.” “Little niggard!” said he, “refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five pounds, Jane.” “Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.” “Just let me look at the cash.” “No, sir; you are not to be trusted.” “Jane!” “Sir?” “Promise me one thing.” “I’ll promise you anything, sir, that I think I am likely to perform.” “Not to advertise: and to trust this quest of a situation to me. I’ll find you one in time.” “I shall be glad so to do, sir, if you, in your turn, will promise that I and Adèle shall be both safe out of the house before your bride enters it.” “Very well! very well! I’ll pledge my word on it. You go to-morrow, then?” “Yes, sir; early.” “Shall you come down to the drawing-room after dinner?” “No, sir, I must prepare for the journey.” “Then you and I must bid good-bye for a little while?” “I suppose so, sir.” “And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me; I’m not quite up to it.” “They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer.” “Then say it.” “Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present.” “What must I say?” “The same, if you like, sir.” “Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present; is that all?” “Yes.” “It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like something else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands, for instance; but no—that would not content me either. So you’ll do no more than say Farewell, Jane?” “It is enough, sir: as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many.” “Very likely; but it is blank and cool—‘Farewell.’” “How long is he going to stand with his back against that door?” I asked myself; “I want to commence my packing.” The dinner-bell rang, and suddenly away he bolted, without another syllable: I saw him no more during the day, and was off before he had risen in the morning. I reached the lodge at Gateshead about five o’clock in the afternoon of the first of May: I stepped in there before going up to the hall. It was very clean and neat: the ornamental windows were hung with little white curtains; the floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were burnished bright, and the fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth, nursing her last-born, and Robert and his sister played quietly in a corner. “Bless you!—I knew you would come!” exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as I entered. “Yes, Bessie,” said I, after I had kissed her; “and I trust I am not too late. How is Mrs. Reed?—Alive still, I hope.” “Yes, she is alive; and more sensible and collected than she was. The doctor says she may linger a week or two yet; but he hardly thinks she will finally recover.” “Has she mentioned me lately?” “She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come, but she is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago, when I was up at the house. She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and wakes up about six or seven. Will you rest yourself here an hour, Miss, and then I will go up with you?” Robert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle and went to welcome him: afterwards she insisted on my taking off my bonnet and having some tea; for she said I looked pale and tired. I was glad to accept her hospitality; and I submitted to be relieved of my travelling garb just as passively as I used to let her undress me when a child. Old times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling about—setting out the tea-tray with her best china, cutting bread and butter, toasting a tea-cake, and, between whiles, giving little Robert or Jane an occasional tap or push, just as she used to give me in former days. Bessie had retained her quick temper as well as her light foot and good looks. Tea ready, I was going to approach the table; but she desired me to sit still, quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served at the fireside, she said; and she placed before me a little round stand with my cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me with some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair: and I smiled and obeyed her as in bygone days. She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort of a person the mistress was; and when I told her there was only a master, whether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her he was rather an ugly man, but quite a gentleman; and that he treated me kindly, and I was content. Then I went on to describe to her the gay company that had lately been staying at the house; and to these details Bessie listened with interest: they were precisely of the kind she relished. In such conversation an hour was soon gone: Bessie restored to me my bonnet, &c., and, accompanied by her, I quitted the lodge for the hall. It was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago, walked down the path I was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning in January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart—a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation—to seek the chilly harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored. The same hostile roof now again rose before me: my prospects were doubtful yet; and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished. “You shall go into the breakfast-room first,” said Bessie, as she preceded me through the hall; “the young ladies will be there.” In another moment I was within that apartment. There was every article of furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first introduced to Mr. Brocklehurst: the very rug he had stood upon still covered the hearth. Glancing at the bookcases, I thought I could distinguish the two volumes of Bewick’s British Birds occupying their old place on the third shelf, and Gulliver’s Travels and the Arabian Nights ranged just above. The inanimate objects were not changed; but the living things had altered past recognition. Two young ladies appeared before me; one very tall, almost as tall as Miss Ingram—very thin too, with a sallow face and severe mien. There was something ascetic in her look, which was augmented by the extreme plainness of a straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen collar, hair combed away from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of a string of ebony beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza, though I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and colourless visage. The other was as certainly Georgiana: but not the Georgiana I remembered—the slim and fairy-like girl of eleven. This was a full-blown, very plump damsel, fair as waxwork, with handsome and regular features, languishing blue eyes, and ringleted yellow hair. The hue of her dress was black too; but its fashion was so different from her sister’s—so much more flowing and becoming—it looked as stylish as the other’s looked puritanical. In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother—and only one; the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent’s Cairngorm eye: the blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin—perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom. Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me by the name of “Miss Eyre.” Eliza’s greeting was delivered in a short, abrupt voice, without a smile; and then she sat down again, fixed her eyes on the fire, and seemed to forget me. Georgiana added to her “How d’ye do?” several commonplaces about my journey, the weather, and so on, uttered in rather a drawling tone: and accompanied by sundry side-glances that measured me from head to foot—now traversing the folds of my drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they think you a “quiz” without actually saying the words. A certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone, express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by any positive rudeness in word or deed. A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power over me it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi-sarcastic attentions of the other—Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle me. The fact was, I had other things to think about; within the last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could raise—pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite had been excited than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow—that their airs gave me no concern either for good or bad. “How is Mrs. Reed?” I asked soon, looking calmly at Georgiana, who thought fit to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an unexpected liberty. “Mrs. Reed? Ah! mama, you mean; she is extremely poorly: I doubt if you can see her to-night.” “If,” said I, “you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, I should be much obliged to you.” Georgiana almost started, and she opened her blue eyes wild and wide. “I know she had a particular wish to see me,” I added, “and I would not defer attending to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary.” “Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening,” remarked Eliza. I soon rose, quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I would just step out to Bessie—who was, I dared say, in the kitchen—and ask her to ascertain whether Mrs. Reed was disposed to receive me or not to-night. I went, and having found Bessie and despatched her on my errand, I proceeded to take further measures. It had heretofore been my habit always to shrink from arrogance: received as I had been to-day, I should, a year ago, have resolved to quit Gateshead the very next morning; now, it was disclosed to me all at once that that would be a foolish plan. I had taken a journey of a hundred miles to see my aunt, and I must stay with her till she was better—or dead: as to her daughters’ pride or folly, I must put it on one side, make myself independent of it. So I addressed the housekeeper; asked her to show me a room, told her I should probably be a visitor here for a week or two, had my trunk conveyed to my chamber, and followed it thither myself: I met Bessie on the landing. “Missis is awake,” said she; “I have told her you are here: come and let us see if she will know you.” I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I hastened before Bessie; I softly opened the door: a shaded light stood on the table, for it was now getting dark. There was the great four-post bed with amber hangings as of old; there the toilet-table, the armchair, and the footstool, at which I had a hundred times been sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me uncommitted. I looked into a certain corner near, half-expecting to see the slim outline of a once dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to leap out imp-like and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I approached the bed; I opened the curtains and leant over the high-piled pillows. Well did I remember Mrs. Reed’s face, and I eagerly sought the familiar image. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries—to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity. The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever—there was that peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised, imperious, despotic eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me menace and hate! and how the recollection of childhood’s terrors and sorrows revived as I traced its harsh line now! And yet I stooped down and kissed her: she looked at me. “Is this Jane Eyre?” she said. “Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, dear aunt?” I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought it no sin to forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her hand which lay outside the sheet: had she pressed mine kindly, I should at that moment have experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so readily eradicated. Mrs. Reed took her hand away, and, turning her face rather from me, she remarked that the night was warm. Again she regarded me so icily, I felt at once that her opinion of me—her feeling towards me—was unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony eye—opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears—that she was resolved to consider me bad to the last; because to believe me good would give her no generous pleasure: only a sense of mortification. I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to subdue her—to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will. My tears had risen, just as in childhood: I ordered them back to their source. I brought a chair to the bed-head: I sat down and leaned over the pillow. “You sent for me,” I said, “and I am here; and it is my intention to stay till I see how you get on.” “Oh, of course! You have seen my daughters?” “Yes.” “Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things over with you I have on my mind: to-night it is too late, and I have a difficulty in recalling them. But there was something I wished to say—let me see—” The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken place in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the bedclothes round her; my elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed it down: she was at once irritated. “Sit up!” said she; “don’t annoy me with holding the clothes fast. Are you Jane Eyre?” “I am Jane Eyre.” “I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe. Such a burden to be left on my hands—and so much annoyance as she caused me, daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of one’s movements! I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a fiend—no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to get her away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The fever broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She, however, did not die: but I said she did—I wish she had died!” “A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you hate her so?” “I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband’s only sister, and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family’s disowning her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her death, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it—a sickly, whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night long—not screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had been his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that age. He would try to make my children friendly to the little beggar: the darlings could not bear it, and he was angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last illness, he had it brought continually to his bedside; and but an hour before he died, he bound me by vow to keep the creature. I would as soon have been charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally weak. John does not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it: John is like me and like my brothers—he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting me with letters for money! I have no more money to give him: we are getting poor. I must send away half the servants and shut up part of the house; or let it off. I can never submit to do that—yet how are we to get on? Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and always loses—poor boy! He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk and degraded—his look is frightful—I feel ashamed for him when I see him.” She was getting much excited. “I think I had better leave her now,” said I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed. “Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards night—in the morning she is calmer.” I rose. “Stop!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed, “there is another thing I wished to say. He threatens me—he continually threatens me with his own death, or mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to a strange pass: I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How is the money to be had?” Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: she succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed, and sank into a dozing state. I then left her. More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with her. She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor forbade everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I got on as well as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold, indeed, at first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing, reading, or writing, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister. Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for occupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me, and they served me for both. Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad’s head, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow’s nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom. One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with features. Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that brow; then followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it: of course, some black whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and waved above the forehead. Now for the eyes: I had left them to the last, because they required the most careful working. I drew them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the irids lustrous and large. “Good! but not quite the thing,” I thought, as I surveyed the effect: “they want more force and spirit;” and I wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might flash more brilliantly—a happy touch or two secured success. There, I had a friend’s face under my gaze; and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs on me? I looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was absorbed and content. “Is that a portrait of some one you know?” asked Eliza, who had approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head, and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was that to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced to look. The other drawings pleased her much, but she called that “an ugly man.” They both seemed surprised at my skill. I offered to sketch their portraits; and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline. Then Georgiana produced her album. I promised to contribute a water-colour drawing: this put her at once into good humour. She proposed a walk in the grounds. Before we had been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential conversation: she had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter she had spent in London two seasons ago—of the admiration she had there excited—the attention she had received; and I even got hints of the titled conquest she had made. In the course of the afternoon and evening these hints were enlarged on: various soft conversations were reported, and sentimental scenes represented; and, in short, a volume of a novel of fashionable life was that day improvised by her for my benefit. The communications were renewed from day to day: they always ran on the same theme—herself, her loves, and woes. It was strange she never once adverted either to her mother’s illness, or her brother’s death, or the present gloomy state of the family prospects. Her mind seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety, and aspirations after dissipations to come. She passed about five minutes each day in her mother’s sick-room, and no more. Eliza still spoke little: she had evidently no time to talk. I never saw a busier person than she seemed to be; yet it was difficult to say what she did: or rather, to discover any result of her diligence. She had an alarm to call her up early. I know not how she occupied herself before breakfast, but after that meal she divided her time into regular portions, and each hour had its allotted task. Three times a day she studied a little book, which I found, on inspection, was a Common Prayer Book. I asked her once what was the great attraction of that volume, and she said, “the Rubric.” Three hours she gave to stitching, with gold thread, the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large enough for a carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this article, she informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new church lately erected near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her diary; two to working by herself in the kitchen-garden; and one to the regulation of her accounts. She seemed to want no company; no conversation. I believe she was happy in her way: this routine sufficed for her; and nothing annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any incident which forced her to vary its clockwork regularity. She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than usual, that John’s conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had been a source of profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said, settled her mind, and formed her resolution. Her own fortune she had taken care to secure; and when her mother died—and it was wholly improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she should either recover or linger long—she would execute a long-cherished project: seek a retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured from disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her. “Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they never had had. She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration. Georgiana should take her own course; and she, Eliza, would take hers.” Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time in lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, and wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an invitation up to town. “It would be so much better,” she said, “if she could only get out of the way for a month or two, till all was over.” I did not ask what she meant by “all being over,” but I suppose she referred to the expected decease of her mother and the gloomy sequel of funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of her sister’s indolence and complaints than if no such murmuring, lounging object had been before her. One day, however, as she put away her account-book and unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus— “Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person’s strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered—you must have music, dancing, and society—or you languish, you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day; share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes—include all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun; and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment: you have had to seek no one’s company, conversation, sympathy, forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an independent being ought to do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer you; then you will not want me or any one else, happen what may. Neglect it—go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling—and suffer the results of your idiocy, however bad and insufferable they may be. I tell you this plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am now about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my mother’s death, I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is carried to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will be as separate as if we had never known each other. You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this—if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to the new.” She closed her lips. “You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade,” answered Georgiana. “Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless creature in existence: and _I_ know your spiteful hatred towards me: I have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about Lord Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you, to have a title, to be received into circles where you dare not show your face, and so you acted the spy and informer, and ruined my prospects for ever.” Georgiana took out her handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour afterwards; Eliza sat cold, impassable, and assiduously industrious. True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here were two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably savourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition. It was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa over the perusal of a novel; Eliza was gone to attend a saint’s-day service at the new church—for in matters of religion she was a rigid formalist: no weather ever prevented the punctual discharge of what she considered her devotional duties; fair or foul, she went to church thrice every Sunday, and as often on week-days as there were prayers. I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped, who lay there almost unheeded: the very servants paid her but a remittent attention: the hired nurse, being little looked after, would slip out of the room whenever she could. Bessie was faithful; but she had her own family to mind, and could only come occasionally to the hall. I found the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected: no nurse was there; the patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic; her livid face sunk in the pillows: the fire was dying in the grate. I renewed the fuel, re-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on her who could not now gaze on me, and then I moved away to the window. The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously: “One lies there,” I thought, “who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements. Whither will that spirit—now struggling to quit its material tenement—flit when at length released?” In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled her dying words—her faith—her doctrine of the equality of disembodied souls. I was still listening in thought to her well-remembered tones—still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her wasted face and sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid deathbed, and whispered her longing to be restored to her divine Father’s bosom—when a feeble voice murmured from the couch behind: “Who is that?” I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days: was she reviving? I went up to her. “It is I, Aunt Reed.” “Who—I?” was her answer. “Who are you?” looking at me with surprise and a sort of alarm, but still not wildly. “You are quite a stranger to me—where is Bessie?” “She is at the lodge, aunt.” “Aunt,” she repeated. “Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the Gibsons; and yet I know you—that face, and the eyes and forehead, are quiet familiar to me: you are like—why, you are like Jane Eyre!” I said nothing: I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my identity. “Yet,” said she, “I am afraid it is a mistake: my thoughts deceive me. I wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists: besides, in eight years she must be so changed.” I now gently assured her that I was the person she supposed and desired me to be: and seeing that I was understood, and that her senses were quite collected, I explained how Bessie had sent her husband to fetch me from Thornfield. “I am very ill, I know,” she said ere long. “I was trying to turn myself a few minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb. It is as well I should ease my mind before I die: what we think little of in health, burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me. Is the nurse here? or is there no one in the room but you?” I assured her we were alone. “Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was in breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own child; the other—” she stopped. “After all, it is of no great importance, perhaps,” she murmured to herself: “and then I may get better; and to humble myself so to her is painful.” She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed; she seemed to experience some inward sensation—the precursor, perhaps, of the last pang. “Well, I must get it over. Eternity is before me: I had better tell her.—Go to my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter you will see there.” I obeyed her directions. “Read the letter,” she said. It was short, and thus conceived:— “MADAM,— “Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my niece, Jane Eyre, and to tell me how she is? It is my intention to write shortly and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence has blessed my endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave. I am, Madam, &c., &c., “JOHN EYRE, Madeira.” It was dated three years back. “Why did I never hear of this?” I asked. “Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me, Jane—the fury with which you once turned on me; the tone in which you declared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the world; the unchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that the very thought of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated you with miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear as if an animal that I had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and cursed me in a man’s voice.—Bring me some water! Oh, make haste!” “Dear Mrs. Reed,” said I, as I offered her the draught she required, “think no more of all this, let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me for my passionate language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have passed since that day.” She heeded nothing of what I said; but when she had tasted the water and drawn breath, she went on thus— “I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was what I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion—expose my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my torment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which, but for you, I should never have been tempted to commit.” “If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to regard me with kindness and forgiveness——” “You have a very bad disposition,” said she, “and one to this day I feel it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence, I can never comprehend.” “My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt.” I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water. As I laid her down—for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she drank—I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the feeble fingers shrank from my touch—the glazing eyes shunned my gaze. “Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,” I said at last, “you have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God’s, and be at peace.” Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort to change her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever hated me—dying, she must hate me still. The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half-an-hour longer, hoping to see some sign of amity: but she gave none. She was fast relapsing into stupor; nor did her mind again rally: at twelve o’clock that night she died. I was not present to close her eyes, nor were either of her daughters. They came to tell us the next morning that all was over. She was by that time laid out. Eliza and I went to look at her: Georgiana, who had burst out into loud weeping, said she dared not go. There was stretched Sarah Reed’s once robust and active frame, rigid and still: her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid; her brow and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul. A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with gloom and pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish for _her_ woes—not _my_ loss—and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a form. Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some minutes she observed— “With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her life was shortened by trouble.” And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an instant: as it passed away she turned and left the room, and so did I. Neither of us had dropt a tear. ', 'Mr. Rochester had given me but one week’s leave of absence: yet a month elapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave immediately after the funeral, but Georgiana entreated me to stay till she could get off to London, whither she was now at last invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson, who had come down to direct his sister’s interment and settle the family affairs. Georgiana said she dreaded being left alone with Eliza; from her she got neither sympathy in her dejection, support in her fears, nor aid in her preparations; so I bore with her feeble-minded wailings and selfish lamentations as well as I could, and did my best in sewing for her and packing her dresses. It is true, that while I worked, she would idle; and I thought to myself, “If you and I were destined to live always together, cousin, we would commence matters on a different footing. I should not settle tamely down into being the forbearing party; I should assign you your share of labour, and compel you to accomplish it, or else it should be left undone: I should insist, also, on your keeping some of those drawling, half-insincere complaints hushed in your own breast. It is only because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes at a peculiarly mournful season, that I consent thus to render it so patient and compliant on my part.” At last I saw Georgiana off; but now it was Eliza’s turn to request me to stay another week. Her plans required all her time and attention, she said; she was about to depart for some unknown bourne; and all day long she stayed in her own room, her door bolted within, filling trunks, emptying drawers, burning papers, and holding no communication with any one. She wished me to look after the house, to see callers, and answer notes of condolence. One morning she told me I was at liberty. “And,” she added, “I am obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct! There is some difference between living with such an one as you and with Georgiana: you perform your own part in life and burden no one. To-morrow,” she continued, “I set out for the Continent. I shall take up my abode in a religious house near Lisle—a nunnery you would call it; there I shall be quiet and unmolested. I shall devote myself for a time to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas, and to a careful study of the workings of their system: if I find it to be, as I half suspect it is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently and in order, I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the veil.” I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to dissuade her from it. “The vocation will fit you to a hair,” I thought: “much good may it do you!” When we parted, she said: “Good-bye, cousin Jane Eyre; I wish you well: you have some sense.” I then returned: “You are not without sense, cousin Eliza; but what you have, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive in a French convent. However, it is not my business, and so it suits you, I don’t much care.” “You are in the right,” said she; and with these words we each went our separate way. As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or her sister again, I may as well mention here, that Georgiana made an advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion, and that Eliza actually took the veil, and is at this day superior of the convent where she passed the period of her novitiate, and which she endowed with her fortune. How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long or short, I did not know: I had never experienced the sensation. I had known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long walk, to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy; and later, what it was to come back from church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a good fire, and to be unable to get either. Neither of these returnings was very pleasant or desirable: no magnet drew me to a given point, increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The return to Thornfield was yet to be tried. My journey seemed tedious—very tedious: fifty miles one day, a night spent at an inn; fifty miles the next day. During the first twelve hours I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments; I saw her disfigured and discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice. I mused on the funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and servants—few was the number of relatives—the gaping vault, the silent church, the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a convent cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person and character. The evening arrival at the great town of —— scattered these thoughts; night gave them quite another turn: laid down on my traveller’s bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation. I was going back to Thornfield: but how long was I to stay there? Not long; of that I was sure. I had heard from Mrs. Fairfax in the interim of my absence: the party at the hall was dispersed; Mr. Rochester had left for London three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return in a fortnight. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make arrangements for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a new carriage: she said the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram still seemed strange to her; but from what everybody said, and from what she had herself seen, she could no longer doubt that the event would shortly take place. “You would be strangely incredulous if you did doubt it,” was my mental comment. “I don’t doubt it.” The question followed, “Where was I to go?” I dreamt of Miss Ingram all the night: in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing the gates of Thornfield against me and pointing me out another road; and Mr. Rochester looked on with his arms folded—smiling sardonically, as it seemed, at both her and me. I had not notified to Mrs. Fairfax the exact day of my return; for I did not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Millcote. I proposed to walk the distance quietly by myself; and very quietly, after leaving my box in the ostler’s care, did I slip away from the George Inn, about six o’clock of a June evening, and take the old road to Thornfield: a road which lay chiefly through fields, and was now little frequented. It was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though fair and soft: the haymakers were at work all along the road; and the sky, though far from cloudless, was such as promised well for the future: its blue—where blue was visible—was mild and settled, and its cloud strata high and thin. The west, too, was warm: no watery gleam chilled it—it seemed as if there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind its screen of marbled vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden redness. I felt glad as the road shortened before me: so glad that I stopped once to ask myself what that joy meant: and to remind reason that it was not to my home I was going, or to a permanent resting-place, or to a place where fond friends looked out for me and waited my arrival. “Mrs. Fairfax will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure,” said I; “and little Adèle will clap her hands and jump to see you: but you know very well you are thinking of another than they, and that he is not thinking of you.” But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience? These affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege of again looking on Mr. Rochester, whether he looked on me or not; and they added—“Hasten! hasten! be with him while you may: but a few more days or weeks, at most, and you are parted from him for ever!” And then I strangled a new-born agony—a deformed thing which I could not persuade myself to own and rear—and ran on. They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the labourers are just quitting their work, and returning home with their rakes on their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive. I have but a field or two to traverse, and then I shall cross the road and reach the gates. How full the hedges are of roses! But I have no time to gather any; I want to be at the house. I passed a tall briar, shooting leafy and flowery branches across the path; I see the narrow stile with stone steps; and I see—Mr. Rochester sitting there, a book and a pencil in his hand; he is writing. Well, he is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung: for a moment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I should tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or the power of motion in his presence. I will go back as soon as I can stir: I need not make an absolute fool of myself. I know another way to the house. It does not signify if I knew twenty ways; for he has seen me. “Hillo!” he cries; and he puts up his book and his pencil. “There you are! Come on, if you please.” I suppose I do come on; though in what fashion I know not; being scarcely cognisant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear calm; and, above all, to control the working muscles of my face—which I feel rebel insolently against my will, and struggle to express what I had resolved to conceal. But I have a veil—it is down: I may make shift yet to behave with decent composure. “And this is Jane Eyre? Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot? Yes—just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage, and come clattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to steal into the vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last month?” “I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead.” “A true Janian reply! Good angels be my guard! She comes from the other world—from the abode of people who are dead; and tells me so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming! If I dared, I’d touch you, to see if you are substance or shadow, you elf!—but I’d as soon offer to take hold of a blue _ignis fatuus_ light in a marsh. Truant! truant!” he added, when he had paused an instant. “Absent from me a whole month, and forgetting me quite, I’ll be sworn!” I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again, even though broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my master, and by the knowledge that I was nothing to him: but there was ever in Mr. Rochester (so at least I thought) such a wealth of the power of communicating happiness, that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered to stray and stranger birds like me, was to feast genially. His last words were balm: they seemed to imply that it imported something to him whether I forgot him or not. And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home—would that it were my home! He did not leave the stile, and I hardly liked to ask to go by. I inquired soon if he had not been to London. “Yes; I suppose you found that out by second-sight.” “Mrs. Fairfax told me in a letter.” “And did she inform you what I went to do?” “Oh, yes, sir! Everybody knew your errand.” “You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don’t think it will suit Mrs. Rochester exactly; and whether she won’t look like Queen Boadicea, leaning back against those purple cushions. I wish, Jane, I were a trifle better adapted to match with her externally. Tell me now, fairy as you are—can’t you give me a charm, or a philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?” “It would be past the power of magic, sir;” and, in thought, I added, “A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty.” Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think it too good for common purposes: it was the real sunshine of feeling—he shed it over me now. “Pass, Janet,” said he, making room for me to cross the stile: “go up home, and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend’s threshold.” All I had now to do was to obey him in silence: no need for me to colloquise further. I got over the stile without a word, and meant to leave him calmly. An impulse held me fast—a force turned me round. I said—or something in me said for me, and in spite of me— “Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home—my only home.” I walked on so fast that even he could hardly have overtaken me had he tried. Little Adèle was half wild with delight when she saw me. Mrs. Fairfax received me with her usual plain friendliness. Leah smiled, and even Sophie bid me “bon soir” with glee. This was very pleasant; there is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort. I that evening shut my eyes resolutely against the future: I stopped my ears against the voice that kept warning me of near separation and coming grief. When tea was over and Mrs. Fairfax had taken her knitting, and I had assumed a low seat near her, and Adèle, kneeling on the carpet, had nestled close up to me, and a sense of mutual affection seemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace, I uttered a silent prayer that we might not be parted far or soon; but when, as we thus sat, Mr. Rochester entered, unannounced, and looking at us, seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle of a group so amicable—when he said he supposed the old lady was all right now that she had got her adopted daughter back again, and added that he saw Adèle was “prête à croquer sa petite maman Anglaise”—I half ventured to hope that he would, even after his marriage, keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his protection, and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence. A fortnight of dubious calm succeeded my return to Thornfield Hall. Nothing was said of the master’s marriage, and I saw no preparation going on for such an event. Almost every day I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had yet heard anything decided: her answer was always in the negative. Once she said she had actually put the question to Mr. Rochester as to when he was going to bring his bride home; but he had answered her only by a joke and one of his queer looks, and she could not tell what to make of him. One thing specially surprised me, and that was, there were no journeyings backward and forward, no visits to Ingram Park: to be sure it was twenty miles off, on the borders of another county; but what was that distance to an ardent lover? To so practised and indefatigable a horseman as Mr. Rochester, it would be but a morning’s ride. I began to cherish hopes I had no right to conceive: that the match was broken off; that rumour had been mistaken; that one or both parties had changed their minds. I used to look at my master’s face to see if it were sad or fierce; but I could not remember the time when it had been so uniformly clear of clouds or evil feelings. If, in the moments I and my pupil spent with him, I lacked spirits and sank into inevitable dejection, he became even gay. Never had he called me more frequently to his presence; never been kinder to me when there—and, alas! never had I loved him so well. ', 'A splendid Midsummer shone over England: skies so pure, suns so radiant as were then seen in long succession, seldom favour even singly, our wave-girt land. It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the South, like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and lighted to rest them on the cliffs of Albion. The hay was all got in; the fields round Thornfield were green and shorn; the roads white and baked; the trees were in their dark prime; hedge and wood, full-leaved and deeply tinted, contrasted well with the sunny hue of the cleared meadows between. On Midsummer-eve, Adèle, weary with gathering wild strawberries in Hay Lane half the day, had gone to bed with the sun. I watched her drop asleep, and when I left her, I sought the garden. It was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four:—“Day its fervid fires had wasted,” and dew fell cool on panting plain and scorched summit. Where the sun had gone down in simple state—pure of the pomp of clouds—spread a solemn purple, burning with the light of red jewel and furnace flame at one point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven. The east had its own charm or fine deep blue, and its own modest gem, a rising and solitary star: soon it would boast the moon; but she was yet beneath the horizon. I walked a while on the pavement; but a subtle, well-known scent—that of a cigar—stole from some window; I saw the library casement open a handbreadth; I knew I might be watched thence; so I went apart into the orchard. No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like; it was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers: a very high wall shut it out from the court, on one side; on the other, a beech avenue screened it from the lawn. At the bottom was a sunk fence; its sole separation from lonely fields: a winding walk, bordered with laurels and terminating in a giant horse-chestnut, circled at the base by a seat, led down to the fence. Here one could wander unseen. While such honey-dew fell, such silence reigned, such gloaming gathered, I felt as if I could haunt such shade for ever; but in threading the flower and fruit parterres at the upper part of the enclosure, enticed there by the light the now rising moon cast on this more open quarter, my step is stayed—not by sound, not by sight, but once more by a warning fragrance. Sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose have long been yielding their evening sacrifice of incense: this new scent is neither of shrub nor flower; it is—I know it well—it is Mr. Rochester’s cigar. I look round and I listen. I see trees laden with ripening fruit. I hear a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off; no moving form is visible, no coming step audible; but that perfume increases: I must flee. I make for the wicket leading to the shrubbery, and I see Mr. Rochester entering. I step aside into the ivy recess; he will not stay long: he will soon return whence he came, and if I sit still he will never see me. But no—eventide is as pleasant to him as to me, and this antique garden as attractive; and he strolls on, now lifting the gooseberry-tree branches to look at the fruit, large as plums, with which they are laden; now taking a ripe cherry from the wall; now stooping towards a knot of flowers, either to inhale their fragrance or to admire the dew-beads on their petals. A great moth goes humming by me; it alights on a plant at Mr. Rochester’s foot: he sees it, and bends to examine it. “Now, he has his back towards me,” thought I, “and he is occupied too; perhaps, if I walk softly, I can slip away unnoticed.” I trode on an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel might not betray me: he was standing among the beds at a yard or two distant from where I had to pass; the moth apparently engaged him. “I shall get by very well,” I meditated. As I crossed his shadow, thrown long over the garden by the moon, not yet risen high, he said quietly, without turning— “Jane, come and look at this fellow.” I had made no noise: he had not eyes behind—could his shadow feel? I started at first, and then I approached him. “Look at his wings,” said he, “he reminds me rather of a West Indian insect; one does not often see so large and gay a night-rover in England; there! he is flown.” The moth roamed away. I was sheepishly retreating also; but Mr. Rochester followed me, and when we reached the wicket, he said— “Turn back: on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the house; and surely no one can wish to go to bed while sunset is thus at meeting with moonrise.” It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr. Rochester in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a reason to allege for leaving him. I followed with lagging step, and thoughts busily bent on discovering a means of extrication; but he himself looked so composed and so grave also, I became ashamed of feeling any confusion: the evil—if evil existent or prospective there was—seemed to lie with me only; his mind was unconscious and quiet. “Jane,” he recommenced, as we entered the laurel walk, and slowly strayed down in the direction of the sunk fence and the horse-chestnut, “Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer, is it not?” “Yes, sir.” “You must have become in some degree attached to the house,—you, who have an eye for natural beauties, and a good deal of the organ of Adhesiveness?” “I am attached to it, indeed.” “And though I don’t comprehend how it is, I perceive you have acquired a degree of regard for that foolish little child Adèle, too; and even for simple dame Fairfax?” “Yes, sir; in different ways, I have an affection for both.” “And would be sorry to part with them?” “Yes.” “Pity!” he said, and sighed and paused. “It is always the way of events in this life,” he continued presently: “no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting-place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.” “Must I move on, sir?” I asked. “Must I leave Thornfield?” “I believe you must, Jane. I am sorry, Janet, but I believe indeed you must.” This was a blow: but I did not let it prostrate me. “Well, sir, I shall be ready when the order to march comes.” “It is come now—I must give it to-night.” “Then you _are_ going to be married, sir?” “Ex-act-ly—pre-cise-ly: with your usual acuteness, you have hit the nail straight on the head.” “Soon, sir?” “Very soon, my—that is, Miss Eyre: and you’ll remember, Jane, the first time I, or Rumour, plainly intimated to you that it was my intention to put my old bachelor’s neck into the sacred noose, to enter into the holy estate of matrimony—to take Miss Ingram to my bosom, in short (she’s an extensive armful: but that’s not to the point—one can’t have too much of such a very excellent thing as my beautiful Blanche): well, as I was saying—listen to me, Jane! You’re not turning your head to look after more moths, are you? That was only a lady-clock, child, ‘flying away home.’ I wish to remind you that it was you who first said to me, with that discretion I respect in you—with that foresight, prudence, and humility which befit your responsible and dependent position—that in case I married Miss Ingram, both you and little Adèle had better trot forthwith. I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in this suggestion on the character of my beloved; indeed, when you are far away, Janet, I’ll try to forget it: I shall notice only its wisdom; which is such that I have made it my law of action. Adèle must go to school; and you, Miss Eyre, must get a new situation.” “Yes, sir, I will advertise immediately: and meantime, I suppose—” I was going to say, “I suppose I may stay here, till I find another shelter to betake myself to:” but I stopped, feeling it would not do to risk a long sentence, for my voice was not quite under command. “In about a month I hope to be a bridegroom,” continued Mr. Rochester; “and in the interim, I shall myself look out for employment and an asylum for you.” “Thank you, sir; I am sorry to give—” “Oh, no need to apologise! I consider that when a dependent does her duty as well as you have done yours, she has a sort of claim upon her employer for any little assistance he can conveniently render her; indeed I have already, through my future mother-in-law, heard of a place that I think will suit: it is to undertake the education of the five daughters of Mrs. Dionysius O’Gall of Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland. You’ll like Ireland, I think: they’re such warm-hearted people there, they say.” “It is a long way off, sir.” “No matter—a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the distance.” “Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier—” “From what, Jane?” “From England and from Thornfield: and—” “Well?” “From _you_, sir.” I said this almost involuntarily, and, with as little sanction of free will, my tears gushed out. I did not cry so as to be heard, however; I avoided sobbing. The thought of Mrs. O’Gall and Bitternutt Lodge struck cold to my heart; and colder the thought of all the brine and foam, destined, as it seemed, to rush between me and the master at whose side I now walked, and coldest the remembrance of the wider ocean—wealth, caste, custom intervened between me and what I naturally and inevitably loved. “It is a long way,” I again said. “It is, to be sure; and when you get to Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland, I shall never see you again, Jane: that’s morally certain. I never go over to Ireland, not having myself much of a fancy for the country. We have been good friends, Jane; have we not?” “Yes, sir.” “And when friends are on the eve of separation, they like to spend the little time that remains to them close to each other. Come! we’ll talk over the voyage and the parting quietly half-an-hour or so, while the stars enter into their shining life up in heaven yonder: here is the chestnut tree: here is the bench at its old roots. Come, we will sit there in peace to-night, though we should never more be destined to sit there together.” He seated me and himself. “It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels: but if I can’t do better, how is it to be helped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?” I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still. “Because,” he said, “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you,—you’d forget me.” “That I _never_ should, sir: you know—” Impossible to proceed. “Jane, do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood? Listen!” In listening, I sobbed convulsively; for I could repress what I endured no longer; I was obliged to yield, and I was shaken from head to foot with acute distress. When I did speak, it was only to express an impetuous wish that I had never been born, or never come to Thornfield. “Because you are sorry to leave it?” The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway, and asserting a right to predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last: yes,—and to speak. “I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield:—I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life,—momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight in,—with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.” “Where do you see the necessity?” he asked suddenly. “Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.” “In what shape?” “In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman,—your bride.” “My bride! What bride? I have no bride!” “But you will have.” “Yes;—I will!—I will!” He set his teeth. “Then I must go:—you have said it yourself.” “No: you must stay! I swear it—and the oath shall be kept.” “I tell you I must go!” I retorted, roused to something like passion. “Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!” “As we are!” repeated Mr. Rochester—“so,” he added, enclosing me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: “so, Jane!” “Yes, so, sir,” I rejoined: “and yet not so; for you are a married man—or as good as a married man, and wed to one inferior to you—to one with whom you have no sympathy—whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union: therefore I am better than you—let me go!” “Where, Jane? To Ireland?” “Yes—to Ireland. I have spoken my mind, and can go anywhere now.” “Jane, be still; don’t struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its desperation.” “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.” Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him. “And your will shall decide your destiny,” he said: “I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.” “You play a farce, which I merely laugh at.” “I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion.” “For that fate you have already made your choice, and must abide by it.” “Jane, be still a few moments: you are over-excited: I will be still too.” A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away—away—to an indefinite distance—it died. The nightingale’s song was then the only voice of the hour: in listening to it, I again wept. Mr. Rochester sat quiet, looking at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke; he at last said— “Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one another.” “I will never again come to your side: I am torn away now, and cannot return.” “But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry.” I was silent: I thought he mocked me. “Come, Jane—come hither.” “Your bride stands between us.” He rose, and with a stride reached me. “My bride is here,” he said, again drawing me to him, “because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?” Still I did not answer, and still I writhed myself from his grasp: for I was still incredulous. “Do you doubt me, Jane?” “Entirely.” “You have no faith in me?” “Not a whit.” “Am I a liar in your eyes?” he asked passionately. “Little sceptic, you _shall_ be convinced. What love have I for Miss Ingram? None: and that you know. What love has she for me? None: as I have taken pains to prove: I caused a rumour to reach her that my fortune was not a third of what was supposed, and after that I presented myself to see the result; it was coldness both from her and her mother. I would not—I could not—marry Miss Ingram. You—you strange, you almost unearthly thing!—I love as my own flesh. You—poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband.” “What, me!” I ejaculated, beginning in his earnestness—and especially in his incivility—to credit his sincerity: “me who have not a friend in the world but you—if you are my friend: not a shilling but what you have given me?” “You, Jane, I must have you for my own—entirely my own. Will you be mine? Say yes, quickly.” “Mr. Rochester, let me look at your face: turn to the moonlight.” “Why?” “Because I want to read your countenance—turn!” “There! you will find it scarcely more legible than a crumpled, scratched page. Read on: only make haste, for I suffer.” His face was very much agitated and very much flushed, and there were strong workings in the features, and strange gleams in the eyes. “Oh, Jane, you torture me!” he exclaimed. “With that searching and yet faithful and generous look, you torture me!” “How can I do that? If you are true, and your offer real, my only feelings to you must be gratitude and devotion—they cannot torture.” “Gratitude!” he ejaculated; and added wildly—“Jane accept me quickly. Say, Edward—give me my name—Edward—I will marry you.” “Are you in earnest? Do you truly love me? Do you sincerely wish me to be your wife?” “I do; and if an oath is necessary to satisfy you, I swear it.” “Then, sir, I will marry you.” “Edward—my little wife!” “Dear Edward!” “Come to me—come to me entirely now,” said he; and added, in his deepest tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine, “Make my happiness—I will make yours.” “God pardon me!” he subjoined ere long; “and man meddle not with me: I have her, and will hold her.” “There is no one to meddle, sir. I have no kindred to interfere.” “No—that is the best of it,” he said. And if I had loved him less I should have thought his accent and look of exultation savage; but, sitting by him, roused from the nightmare of parting—called to the paradise of union—I thought only of the bliss given me to drink in so abundant a flow. Again and again he said, “Are you happy, Jane?” And again and again I answered, “Yes.” After which he murmured, “It will atone—it will atone. Have I not found her friendless, and cold, and comfortless? Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace her? Is there not love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at God’s tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world’s judgment—I wash my hands thereof. For man’s opinion—I defy it.” But what had befallen the night? The moon was not yet set, and we were all in shadow: I could scarcely see my master’s face, near as I was. And what ailed the chestnut tree? it writhed and groaned; while wind roared in the laurel walk, and came sweeping over us. “We must go in,” said Mr. Rochester: “the weather changes. I could have sat with thee till morning, Jane.” “And so,” thought I, “could I with you.” I should have said so, perhaps, but a livid, vivid spark leapt out of a cloud at which I was looking, and there was a crack, a crash, and a close rattling peal; and I thought only of hiding my dazzled eyes against Mr. Rochester’s shoulder. The rain rushed down. He hurried me up the walk, through the grounds, and into the house; but we were quite wet before we could pass the threshold. He was taking off my shawl in the hall, and shaking the water out of my loosened hair, when Mrs. Fairfax emerged from her room. I did not observe her at first, nor did Mr. Rochester. The lamp was lit. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. “Hasten to take off your wet things,” said he; “and before you go, good-night—good-night, my darling!” He kissed me repeatedly. When I looked up, on leaving his arms, there stood the widow, pale, grave, and amazed. I only smiled at her, and ran upstairs. “Explanation will do for another time,” thought I. Still, when I reached my chamber, I felt a pang at the idea she should even temporarily misconstrue what she had seen. But joy soon effaced every other feeling; and loud as the wind blew, near and deep as the thunder crashed, fierce and frequent as the lightning gleamed, cataract-like as the rain fell during a storm of two hours’ duration, I experienced no fear and little awe. Mr. Rochester came thrice to my door in the course of it, to ask if I was safe and tranquil: and that was comfort, that was strength for anything. Before I left my bed in the morning, little Adèle came running in to tell me that the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away. ', 'As I rose and dressed, I thought over what had happened, and wondered if it were a dream. I could not be certain of the reality till I had seen Mr. Rochester again, and heard him renew his words of love and promise. While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain: there was hope in its aspect and life in its colour; and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple. I had often been unwilling to look at my master, because I feared he could not be pleased at my look; but I was sure I might lift my face to his now, and not cool his affection by its expression. I took a plain but clean and light summer dress from my drawer and put it on: it seemed no attire had ever so well become me, because none had I ever worn in so blissful a mood. I was not surprised, when I ran down into the hall, to see that a brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the night; and to feel, through the open glass door, the breathing of a fresh and fragrant breeze. Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy. A beggar-woman and her little boy—pale, ragged objects both—were coming up the walk, and I ran down and gave them all the money I happened to have in my purse—some three or four shillings: good or bad, they must partake of my jubilee. The rooks cawed, and blither birds sang; but nothing was so merry or so musical as my own rejoicing heart. Mrs. Fairfax surprised me by looking out of the window with a sad countenance, and saying gravely—“Miss Eyre, will you come to breakfast?” During the meal she was quiet and cool: but I could not undeceive her then. I must wait for my master to give explanations; and so must she. I ate what I could, and then I hastened upstairs. I met Adèle leaving the schoolroom. “Where are you going? It is time for lessons.” “Mr. Rochester has sent me away to the nursery.” “Where is he?” “In there,” pointing to the apartment she had left; and I went in, and there he stood. “Come and bid me good-morning,” said he. I gladly advanced; and it was not merely a cold word now, or even a shake of the hand that I received, but an embrace and a kiss. It seemed natural: it seemed genial to be so well loved, so caressed by him. “Jane, you look blooming, and smiling, and pretty,” said he: “truly pretty this morning. Is this my pale, little elf? Is this my mustard-seed? This little sunny-faced girl with the dimpled cheek and rosy lips; the satin-smooth hazel hair, and the radiant hazel eyes?” (I had green eyes, reader; but you must excuse the mistake: for him they were new-dyed, I suppose.) “It is Jane Eyre, sir.” “Soon to be Jane Rochester,” he added: “in four weeks, Janet; not a day more. Do you hear that?” I did, and I could not quite comprehend it: it made me giddy. The feeling, the announcement sent through me, was something stronger than was consistent with joy—something that smote and stunned: it was, I think, almost fear. “You blushed, and now you are white, Jane: what is that for?” “Because you gave me a new name—Jane Rochester; and it seems so strange.” “Yes, Mrs. Rochester,” said he; “young Mrs. Rochester—Fairfax Rochester’s girl-bride.” “It can never be, sir; it does not sound likely. Human beings never enjoy complete happiness in this world. I was not born for a different destiny to the rest of my species: to imagine such a lot befalling me is a fairy tale—a day-dream.” “Which I can and will realise. I shall begin to-day. This morning I wrote to my banker in London to send me certain jewels he has in his keeping,—heirlooms for the ladies of Thornfield. In a day or two I hope to pour them into your lap: for every privilege, every attention shall be yours that I would accord a peer’s daughter, if about to marry her.” “Oh, sir!—never rain jewels! I don’t like to hear them spoken of. Jewels for Jane Eyre sounds unnatural and strange: I would rather not have them.” “I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck, and the circlet on your forehead,—which it will become: for nature, at least, has stamped her patent of nobility on this brow, Jane; and I will clasp the bracelets on these fine wrists, and load these fairy-like fingers with rings.” “No, no, sir! think of other subjects, and speak of other things, and in another strain. Don’t address me as if I were a beauty; I am your plain, Quakerish governess.” “You are a beauty in my eyes, and a beauty just after the desire of my heart,—delicate and aërial.” “Puny and insignificant, you mean. You are dreaming, sir,—or you are sneering. For God’s sake, don’t be ironical!” “I will make the world acknowledge you a beauty, too,” he went on, while I really became uneasy at the strain he had adopted, because I felt he was either deluding himself or trying to delude me. “I will attire my Jane in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair; and I will cover the head I love best with a priceless veil.” “And then you won’t know me, sir; and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin’s jacket—a jay in borrowed plumes. I would as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings, as myself clad in a court-lady’s robe; and I don’t call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don’t flatter me.” He pursued his theme, however, without noticing my deprecation. “This very day I shall take you in the carriage to Millcote, and you must choose some dresses for yourself. I told you we shall be married in four weeks. The wedding is to take place quietly, in the church down below yonder; and then I shall waft you away at once to town. After a brief stay there, I shall bear my treasure to regions nearer the sun: to French vineyards and Italian plains; and she shall see whatever is famous in old story and in modern record: she shall taste, too, of the life of cities; and she shall learn to value herself by just comparison with others.” “Shall I travel?—and with you, sir?” “You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples: at Florence, Venice, and Vienna: all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by you: wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph’s foot shall step also. Ten years since, I flew through Europe half mad; with disgust, hate, and rage as my companions: now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed, with a very angel as my comforter.” I laughed at him as he said this. “I am not an angel,” I asserted; “and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me—for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.” “What do you anticipate of me?” “For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now,—a very little while; and then you will turn cool; and then you will be capricious; and then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you: but when you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me again,—_like_ me, I say, not _love_ me. I suppose your love will effervesce in six months, or less. I have observed in books written by men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband’s ardour extends. Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master.” “Distasteful! and like you again! I think I shall like you again, and yet again: and I will make you confess I do not only _like_, but _love_ you—with truth, fervour, constancy.” “Yet are you not capricious, sir?” “To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts—when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break—at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent—I am ever tender and true.” “Had you ever experience of such a character, sir? Did you ever love such an one?” “I love it now.” “But before me: if I, indeed, in any respect come up to your difficult standard?” “I never met your likeness. Jane, you please me, and you master me—you seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up my arm to my heart. I am influenced—conquered; and the influence is sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph I can win. Why do you smile, Jane? What does that inexplicable, that uncanny turn of countenance mean?” “I was thinking, sir (you will excuse the idea; it was involuntary), I was thinking of Hercules and Samson with their charmers—” “You were, you little elfish—” “Hush, sir! You don’t talk very wisely just now; any more than those gentlemen acted very wisely. However, had they been married, they would no doubt by their severity as husbands have made up for their softness as suitors; and so will you, I fear. I wonder how you will answer me a year hence, should I ask a favour it does not suit your convenience or pleasure to grant.” “Ask me something now, Janet,—the least thing: I desire to be entreated—” “Indeed I will, sir; I have my petition all ready.” “Speak! But if you look up and smile with that countenance, I shall swear concession before I know to what, and that will make a fool of me.” “Not at all, sir; I ask only this: don’t send for the jewels, and don’t crown me with roses: you might as well put a border of gold lace round that plain pocket handkerchief you have there.” “I might as well ‘gild refined gold.’ I know it: your request is granted then—for the time. I will remand the order I despatched to my banker. But you have not yet asked for anything; you have prayed a gift to be withdrawn: try again.” “Well then, sir, have the goodness to gratify my curiosity, which is much piqued on one point.” He looked disturbed. “What? what?” he said hastily. “Curiosity is a dangerous petition: it is well I have not taken a vow to accord every request—” “But there can be no danger in complying with this, sir.” “Utter it, Jane: but I wish that instead of a mere inquiry into, perhaps, a secret, it was a wish for half my estate.” “Now, King Ahasuerus! What do I want with half your estate? Do you think I am a Jew-usurer, seeking good investment in land? I would much rather have all your confidence. You will not exclude me from your confidence if you admit me to your heart?” “You are welcome to all my confidence that is worth having, Jane; but for God’s sake, don’t desire a useless burden! Don’t long for poison—don’t turn out a downright Eve on my hands!” “Why not, sir? You have just been telling me how much you liked to be conquered, and how pleasant over-persuasion is to you. Don’t you think I had better take advantage of the confession, and begin and coax and entreat—even cry and be sulky if necessary—for the sake of a mere essay of my power?” “I dare you to any such experiment. Encroach, presume, and the game is up.” “Is it, sir? You soon give in. How stern you look now! Your eyebrows have become as thick as my finger, and your forehead resembles what, in some very astonishing poetry, I once saw styled, ‘a blue-piled thunderloft.’ That will be your married look, sir, I suppose?” “If that will be _your_ married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what had you to ask, thing,—out with it?” “There, you are less than civil now; and I like rudeness a great deal better than flattery. I had rather be a _thing_ than an angel. This is what I have to ask,—Why did you take such pains to make me believe you wished to marry Miss Ingram?” “Is that all? Thank God it is no worse!” And now he unknit his black brows; looked down, smiling at me, and stroked my hair, as if well pleased at seeing a danger averted. “I think I may confess,” he continued, “even although I should make you a little indignant, Jane—and I have seen what a fire-spirit you can be when you are indignant. You glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you mutinied against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal. Janet, by-the-bye, it was you who made me the offer.” “Of course I did. But to the point if you please, sir—Miss Ingram?” “Well, I feigned courtship of Miss Ingram, because I wished to render you as madly in love with me as I was with you; and I knew jealousy would be the best ally I could call in for the furtherance of that end.” “Excellent! Now you are small—not one whit bigger than the end of my little finger. It was a burning shame and a scandalous disgrace to act in that way. Did you think nothing of Miss Ingram’s feelings, sir?” “Her feelings are concentrated in one—pride; and that needs humbling. Were you jealous, Jane?” “Never mind, Mr. Rochester: it is in no way interesting to you to know that. Answer me truly once more. Do you think Miss Ingram will not suffer from your dishonest coquetry? Won’t she feel forsaken and deserted?” “Impossible!—when I told you how she, on the contrary, deserted me: the idea of my insolvency cooled, or rather extinguished, her flame in a moment.” “You have a curious, designing mind, Mr. Rochester. I am afraid your principles on some points are eccentric.” “My principles were never trained, Jane: they may have grown a little awry for want of attention.” “Once again, seriously; may I enjoy the great good that has been vouchsafed to me, without fearing that any one else is suffering the bitter pain I myself felt a while ago?” “That you may, my good little girl: there is not another being in the world has the same pure love for me as yourself—for I lay that pleasant unction to my soul, Jane, a belief in your affection.” I turned my lips to the hand that lay on my shoulder. I loved him very much—more than I could trust myself to say—more than words had power to express. “Ask something more,” he said presently; “it is my delight to be entreated, and to yield.” I was again ready with my request. “Communicate your intentions to Mrs. Fairfax, sir: she saw me with you last night in the hall, and she was shocked. Give her some explanation before I see her again. It pains me to be misjudged by so good a woman.” “Go to your room, and put on your bonnet,” he replied. “I mean you to accompany me to Millcote this morning; and while you prepare for the drive, I will enlighten the old lady’s understanding. Did she think, Janet, you had given the world for love, and considered it well lost?” “I believe she thought I had forgotten my station, and yours, sir.” “Station! station!—your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you, now or hereafter.—Go.” I was soon dressed; and when I heard Mr. Rochester quit Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour, I hurried down to it. The old lady had been reading her morning portion of Scripture—the Lesson for the day; her Bible lay open before her, and her spectacles were upon it. Her occupation, suspended by Mr. Rochester’s announcement, seemed now forgotten: her eyes, fixed on the blank wall opposite, expressed the surprise of a quiet mind stirred by unwonted tidings. Seeing me, she roused herself: she made a sort of effort to smile, and framed a few words of congratulation; but the smile expired, and the sentence was abandoned unfinished. She put up her spectacles, shut the Bible, and pushed her chair back from the table. “I feel so astonished,” she began, “I hardly know what to say to you, Miss Eyre. I have surely not been dreaming, have I? Sometimes I half fall asleep when I am sitting alone and fancy things that have never happened. It has seemed to me more than once when I have been in a doze, that my dear husband, who died fifteen years since, has come in and sat down beside me; and that I have even heard him call me by my name, Alice, as he used to do. Now, can you tell me whether it is actually true that Mr. Rochester has asked you to marry him? Don’t laugh at me. But I really thought he came in here five minutes ago, and said that in a month you would be his wife.” “He has said the same thing to me,” I replied. “He has! Do you believe him? Have you accepted him?” “Yes.” She looked at me bewildered. “I could never have thought it. He is a proud man: all the Rochesters were proud: and his father, at least, liked money. He, too, has always been called careful. He means to marry you?” “He tells me so.” She surveyed my whole person: in her eyes I read that they had there found no charm powerful enough to solve the enigma. “It passes me!” she continued; “but no doubt it is true since you say so. How it will answer, I cannot tell: I really don’t know. Equality of position and fortune is often advisable in such cases; and there are twenty years of difference in your ages. He might almost be your father.” “No, indeed, Mrs. Fairfax!” exclaimed I, nettled; “he is nothing like my father! No one, who saw us together, would suppose it for an instant. Mr. Rochester looks as young, and is as young, as some men at five-and-twenty.” “Is it really for love he is going to marry you?” she asked. I was so hurt by her coldness and scepticism, that the tears rose to my eyes. “I am sorry to grieve you,” pursued the widow; “but you are so young, and so little acquainted with men, I wished to put you on your guard. It is an old saying that ‘all is not gold that glitters;’ and in this case I do fear there will be something found to be different to what either you or I expect.” “Why?—am I a monster?” I said: “is it impossible that Mr. Rochester should have a sincere affection for me?” “No: you are very well; and much improved of late; and Mr. Rochester, I daresay, is fond of you. I have always noticed that you were a sort of pet of his. There are times when, for your sake, I have been a little uneasy at his marked preference, and have wished to put you on your guard: but I did not like to suggest even the possibility of wrong. I knew such an idea would shock, perhaps offend you; and you were so discreet, and so thoroughly modest and sensible, I hoped you might be trusted to protect yourself. Last night I cannot tell you what I suffered when I sought all over the house, and could find you nowhere, nor the master either; and then, at twelve o’clock, saw you come in with him.” “Well, never mind that now,” I interrupted impatiently; “it is enough that all was right.” “I hope all will be right in the end,” she said: “but believe me, you cannot be too careful. Try and keep Mr. Rochester at a distance: distrust yourself as well as him. Gentlemen in his station are not accustomed to marry their governesses.” I was growing truly irritated: happily, Adèle ran in. “Let me go,—let me go to Millcote too!” she cried. “Mr. Rochester won’t: though there is so much room in the new carriage. Beg him to let me go, mademoiselle.” “That I will, Adèle;” and I hastened away with her, glad to quit my gloomy monitress. The carriage was ready: they were bringing it round to the front, and my master was pacing the pavement, Pilot following him backwards and forwards. “Adèle may accompany us, may she not, sir?” “I told her no. I’ll have no brats!—I’ll have only you.” “Do let her go, Mr. Rochester, if you please: it would be better.” “Not it: she will be a restraint.” He was quite peremptory, both in look and voice. The chill of Mrs. Fairfax’s warnings, and the damp of her doubts were upon me: something of unsubstantiality and uncertainty had beset my hopes. I half lost the sense of power over him. I was about mechanically to obey him, without further remonstrance; but as he helped me into the carriage, he looked at my face. “What is the matter?” he asked; “all the sunshine is gone. Do you really wish the bairn to go? Will it annoy you if she is left behind?” “I would far rather she went, sir.” “Then off for your bonnet, and back like a flash of lightning!” cried he to Adèle. She obeyed him with what speed she might. “After all, a single morning’s interruption will not matter much,” said he, “when I mean shortly to claim you—your thoughts, conversation, and company—for life.” Adèle, when lifted in, commenced kissing me, by way of expressing her gratitude for my intercession: she was instantly stowed away into a corner on the other side of him. She then peeped round to where I sat; so stern a neighbour was too restrictive: to him, in his present fractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask of him any information. “Let her come to me,” I entreated: “she will, perhaps, trouble you, sir: there is plenty of room on this side.” He handed her over as if she had been a lapdog. “I’ll send her to school yet,” he said, but now he was smiling. Adèle heard him, and asked if she was to go to school “sans mademoiselle?” “Yes,” he replied, “absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and only me.” “She will have nothing to eat: you will starve her,” observed Adèle. “I shall gather manna for her morning and night: the plains and hillsides in the moon are bleached with manna, Adèle.” “She will want to warm herself: what will she do for a fire?” “Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I’ll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater.” “Oh, qu’elle y sera mal—peu comfortable! And her clothes, they will wear out: how can she get new ones?” Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled. “Hem!” said he. “What would you do, Adèle? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And one could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow.” “She is far better as she is,” concluded Adèle, after musing some time: “besides, she would get tired of living with only you in the moon. If I were mademoiselle, I would never consent to go with you.” “She has consented: she has pledged her word.” “But you can’t get her there; there is no road to the moon: it is all air; and neither you nor she can fly.” “Adèle, look at that field.” We were now outside Thornfield gates, and bowling lightly along the smooth road to Millcote, where the dust was well laid by the thunderstorm, and, where the low hedges and lofty timber trees on each side glistened green and rain-refreshed. “In that field, Adèle, I was walking late one evening about a fortnight since—the evening of the day you helped me to make hay in the orchard meadows; and, as I was tired with raking swaths, I sat down to rest me on a stile; and there I took out a little book and a pencil, and began to write about a misfortune that befell me long ago, and a wish I had for happy days to come: I was writing away very fast, though daylight was fading from the leaf, when something came up the path and stopped two yards off me. I looked at it. It was a little thing with a veil of gossamer on its head. I beckoned it to come near me; it stood soon at my knee. I never spoke to it, and it never spoke to me, in words; but I read its eyes, and it read mine; and our speechless colloquy was to this effect— “It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said; and its errand was to make me happy: I must go with it out of the common world to a lonely place—such as the moon, for instance—and it nodded its head towards her horn, rising over Hay-hill: it told me of the alabaster cave and silver vale where we might live. I said I should like to go; but reminded it, as you did me, that I had no wings to fly. “‘Oh,’ returned the fairy, ‘that does not signify! Here is a talisman will remove all difficulties;’ and she held out a pretty gold ring. ‘Put it,’ she said, ‘on the fourth finger of my left hand, and I am yours, and you are mine; and we shall leave earth, and make our own heaven yonder.’ She nodded again at the moon. The ring, Adèle, is in my breeches-pocket, under the disguise of a sovereign: but I mean soon to change it to a ring again.” “But what has mademoiselle to do with it? I don’t care for the fairy: you said it was mademoiselle you would take to the moon?” “Mademoiselle is a fairy,” he said, whispering mysteriously. Whereupon I told her not to mind his badinage; and she, on her part, evinced a fund of genuine French scepticism: denominating Mr. Rochester “un vrai menteur,” and assuring him that she made no account whatever of his “contes de fée,” and that “du reste, il n’y avait pas de fées, et quand même il y en avait:” she was sure they would never appear to him, nor ever give him rings, or offer to live with him in the moon. The hour spent at Millcote was a somewhat harassing one to me. Mr. Rochester obliged me to go to a certain silk warehouse: there I was ordered to choose half-a-dozen dresses. I hated the business, I begged leave to defer it: no—it should be gone through with now. By dint of entreaties expressed in energetic whispers, I reduced the half-dozen to two: these however, he vowed he would select himself. With anxiety I watched his eye rove over the gay stores: he fixed on a rich silk of the most brilliant amethyst dye, and a superb pink satin. I told him in a new series of whispers, that he might as well buy me a gold gown and a silver bonnet at once: I should certainly never venture to wear his choice. With infinite difficulty, for he was stubborn as a stone, I persuaded him to make an exchange in favour of a sober black satin and pearl-grey silk. “It might pass for the present,” he said; “but he would yet see me glittering like a parterre.” Glad was I to get him out of the silk warehouse, and then out of a jeweller’s shop: the more he bought me, the more my cheek burned with a sense of annoyance and degradation. As we re-entered the carriage, and I sat back feverish and fagged, I remembered what, in the hurry of events, dark and bright, I had wholly forgotten—the letter of my uncle, John Eyre, to Mrs. Reed: his intention to adopt me and make me his legatee. “It would, indeed, be a relief,” I thought, “if I had ever so small an independency; I never can bear being dressed like a doll by Mr. Rochester, or sitting like a second Danae with the golden shower falling daily round me. I will write to Madeira the moment I get home, and tell my uncle John I am going to be married, and to whom: if I had but a prospect of one day bringing Mr. Rochester an accession of fortune, I could better endure to be kept by him now.” And somewhat relieved by this idea (which I failed not to execute that day), I ventured once more to meet my master’s and lover’s eye, which most pertinaciously sought mine, though I averted both face and gaze. He smiled; and I thought his smile was such as a sultan might, in a blissful and fond moment, bestow on a slave his gold and gems had enriched: I crushed his hand, which was ever hunting mine, vigorously, and thrust it back to him red with the passionate pressure. “You need not look in that way,” I said; “if you do, I’ll wear nothing but my old Lowood frocks to the end of the chapter. I’ll be married in this lilac gingham: you may make a dressing-gown for yourself out of the pearl-grey silk, and an infinite series of waistcoats out of the black satin.” He chuckled; he rubbed his hands. “Oh, it is rich to see and hear her!” he exclaimed. “Is she original? Is she piquant? I would not exchange this one little English girl for the Grand Turk’s whole seraglio, gazelle-eyes, houri forms, and all!” The Eastern allusion bit me again. “I’ll not stand you an inch in the stead of a seraglio,” I said; “so don’t consider me an equivalent for one. If you have a fancy for anything in that line, away with you, sir, to the bazaars of Stamboul without delay, and lay out in extensive slave-purchases some of that spare cash you seem at a loss to spend satisfactorily here.” “And what will you do, Janet, while I am bargaining for so many tons of flesh and such an assortment of black eyes?” “I’ll be preparing myself to go out as a missionary to preach liberty to them that are enslaved—your harem inmates amongst the rest. I’ll get admitted there, and I’ll stir up mutiny; and you, three-tailed bashaw as you are, sir, shall in a trice find yourself fettered amongst our hands: nor will I, for one, consent to cut your bonds till you have signed a charter, the most liberal that despot ever yet conferred.” “I would consent to be at your mercy, Jane.” “I would have no mercy, Mr. Rochester, if you supplicated for it with an eye like that. While you looked so, I should be certain that whatever charter you might grant under coercion, your first act, when released, would be to violate its conditions.” “Why, Jane, what would you have? I fear you will compel me to go through a private marriage ceremony, besides that performed at the altar. You will stipulate, I see, for peculiar terms—what will they be?” “I only want an easy mind, sir; not crushed by crowded obligations. Do you remember what you said of Céline Varens?—of the diamonds, the cashmeres you gave her? I will not be your English Céline Varens. I shall continue to act as Adèle’s governess; by that I shall earn my board and lodging, and thirty pounds a year besides. I’ll furnish my own wardrobe out of that money, and you shall give me nothing but—” “Well, but what?” “Your regard; and if I give you mine in return, that debt will be quit.” “Well, for cool native impudence and pure innate pride, you haven’t your equal,” said he. We were now approaching Thornfield. “Will it please you to dine with me to-day?” he asked, as we re-entered the gates. “No, thank you, sir.” “And what for, ‘no, thank you?’ if one may inquire.” “I never have dined with you, sir: and I see no reason why I should now: till—” “Till what? You delight in half-phrases.” “Till I can’t help it.” “Do you suppose I eat like an ogre or a ghoul, that you dread being the companion of my repast?” “I have formed no supposition on the subject, sir; but I want to go on as usual for another month.” “You will give up your governessing slavery at once.” “Indeed, begging your pardon, sir, I shall not. I shall just go on with it as usual. I shall keep out of your way all day, as I have been accustomed to do: you may send for me in the evening, when you feel disposed to see me, and I’ll come then; but at no other time.” “I want a smoke, Jane, or a pinch of snuff, to comfort me under all this, ‘pour me donner une contenance,’ as Adèle would say; and unfortunately I have neither my cigar-case, nor my snuff-box. But listen—whisper. It is your time now, little tyrant, but it will be mine presently; and when once I have fairly seized you, to have and to hold, I’ll just—figuratively speaking—attach you to a chain like this” (touching his watch-guard). “Yes, bonny wee thing, I’ll wear you in my bosom, lest my jewel I should tyne.” He said this as he helped me to alight from the carriage, and while he afterwards lifted out Adèle, I entered the house, and made good my retreat upstairs. He duly summoned me to his presence in the evening. I had prepared an occupation for him; for I was determined not to spend the whole time in a _tête-à-tête_ conversation. I remembered his fine voice; I knew he liked to sing—good singers generally do. I was no vocalist myself, and, in his fastidious judgment, no musician, either; but I delighted in listening when the performance was good. No sooner had twilight, that hour of romance, began to lower her blue and starry banner over the lattice, than I rose, opened the piano, and entreated him, for the love of heaven, to give me a song. He said I was a capricious witch, and that he would rather sing another time; but I averred that no time was like the present. “Did I like his voice?” he asked. “Very much.” I was not fond of pampering that susceptible vanity of his; but for once, and from motives of expediency, I would e’en soothe and stimulate it. “Then, Jane, you must play the accompaniment.” “Very well, sir, I will try.” I did try, but was presently swept off the stool and denominated “a little bungler.” Being pushed unceremoniously to one side—which was precisely what I wished—he usurped my place, and proceeded to accompany himself: for he could play as well as sing. I hied me to the window-recess. And while I sat there and looked out on the still trees and dim lawn, to a sweet air was sung in mellow tones the following strain:— “The truest love that ever heart Felt at its kindled core, Did through each vein, in quickened start, The tide of being pour. Her coming was my hope each day, Her parting was my pain; The chance that did her steps delay Was ice in every vein. I dreamed it would be nameless bliss, As I loved, loved to be; And to this object did I press As blind as eagerly. But wide as pathless was the space That lay our lives between, And dangerous as the foamy race Of ocean-surges green. And haunted as a robber-path Through wilderness or wood; For Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath, Between our spirits stood. I dangers dared; I hindrance scorned; I omens did defy: Whatever menaced, harassed, warned, I passed impetuous by. On sped my rainbow, fast as light; I flew as in a dream; For glorious rose upon my sight That child of Shower and Gleam. Still bright on clouds of suffering dim Shines that soft, solemn joy; Nor care I now, how dense and grim Disasters gather nigh. I care not in this moment sweet, Though all I have rushed o’er Should come on pinion, strong and fleet, Proclaiming vengeance sore: Though haughty Hate should strike me down, Right, bar approach to me, And grinding Might, with furious frown, Swear endless enmity. My love has placed her little hand With noble faith in mine, And vowed that wedlock’s sacred band Our nature shall entwine. My love has sworn, with sealing kiss, With me to live—to die; I have at last my nameless bliss. As I love—loved am I!” He rose and came towards me, and I saw his face all kindled, and his full falcon-eye flashing, and tenderness and passion in every lineament. I quailed momentarily—then I rallied. Soft scene, daring demonstration, I would not have; and I stood in peril of both: a weapon of defence must be prepared—I whetted my tongue: as he reached me, I asked with asperity, “whom he was going to marry now?” “That was a strange question to be put by his darling Jane.” “Indeed! I considered it a very natural and necessary one: he had talked of his future wife dying with him. What did he mean by such a pagan idea? _I_ had no intention of dying with him—he might depend on that.” “Oh, all he longed, all he prayed for, was that I might live with him! Death was not for such as I.” “Indeed it was: I had as good a right to die when my time came as he had: but I should bide that time, and not be hurried away in a suttee.” “Would I forgive him for the selfish idea, and prove my pardon by a reconciling kiss?” “No: I would rather be excused.” Here I heard myself apostrophised as a “hard little thing;” and it was added, “any other woman would have been melted to marrow at hearing such stanzas crooned in her praise.” I assured him I was naturally hard—very flinty, and that he would often find me so; and that, moreover, I was determined to show him divers rugged points in my character before the ensuing four weeks elapsed: he should know fully what sort of a bargain he had made, while there was yet time to rescind it. “Would I be quiet and talk rationally?” “I would be quiet if he liked, and as to talking rationally, I flattered myself I was doing that now.” He fretted, pished, and pshawed. “Very good,” I thought; “you may fume and fidget as you please: but this is the best plan to pursue with you, I am certain. I like you more than I can say; but I’ll not sink into a bathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I’ll keep you from the edge of the gulf too; and, moreover, maintain by its pungent aid that distance between you and myself most conducive to our real mutual advantage.” From less to more, I worked him up to considerable irritation; then, after he had retired, in dudgeon, quite to the other end of the room, I got up, and saying, “I wish you good-night, sir,” in my natural and wonted respectful manner, I slipped out by the side-door and got away. The system thus entered on, I pursued during the whole season of probation; and with the best success. He was kept, to be sure, rather cross and crusty; but on the whole I could see he was excellently entertained, and that a lamb-like submission and turtle-dove sensibility, while fostering his despotism more, would have pleased his judgment, satisfied his common-sense, and even suited his taste less. In other people’s presence I was, as formerly, deferential and quiet; any other line of conduct being uncalled for: it was only in the evening conferences I thus thwarted and afflicted him. He continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as “love” and “darling” on his lips: the best words at my service were “provoking puppet,” “malicious elf,” “sprite,” “changeling,” &c. For caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to anything more tender. Mrs. Fairfax, I saw, approved me: her anxiety on my account vanished; therefore I was certain I did well. Meantime, Mr. Rochester affirmed I was wearing him to skin and bone, and threatened awful vengeance for my present conduct at some period fast coming. I laughed in my sleeve at his menaces. “I can keep you in reasonable check now,” I reflected; “and I don’t doubt to be able to do it hereafter: if one expedient loses its virtue, another must be devised.” Yet after all my task was not an easy one; often I would rather have pleased than teased him. My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol. ', 'The month of courtship had wasted: its very last hours were being numbered. There was no putting off the day that advanced—the bridal day; and all preparations for its arrival were complete. _I_, at least, had nothing more to do: there were my trunks, packed, locked, corded, ranged in a row along the wall of my little chamber; to-morrow, at this time, they would be far on their road to London: and so should I (D.V.),—or rather, not I, but one Jane Rochester, a person whom as yet I knew not. The cards of address alone remained to nail on: they lay, four little squares, in the drawer. Mr. Rochester had himself written the direction, “Mrs. Rochester, —— Hotel, London,” on each: I could not persuade myself to affix them, or to have them affixed. Mrs. Rochester! She did not exist: she would not be born till to-morrow, some time after eight o’clock A.M.; and I would wait to be assured she had come into the world alive before I assigned to her all that property. It was enough that in yonder closet, opposite my dressing-table, garments said to be hers had already displaced my black stuff Lowood frock and straw bonnet: for not to me appertained that suit of wedding raiment; the pearl-coloured robe, the vapoury veil pendent from the usurped portmanteau. I shut the closet to conceal the strange, wraith-like apparel it contained; which, at this evening hour—nine o’clock—gave out certainly a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow of my apartment. “I will leave you by yourself, white dream,” I said. “I am feverish: I hear the wind blowing: I will go out of doors and feel it.” It was not only the hurry of preparation that made me feverish; not only the anticipation of the great change—the new life which was to commence to-morrow: both these circumstances had their share, doubtless, in producing that restless, excited mood which hurried me forth at this late hour into the darkening grounds: but a third cause influenced my mind more than they. I had at heart a strange and anxious thought. Something had happened which I could not comprehend; no one knew of or had seen the event but myself: it had taken place the preceding night. Mr. Rochester that night was absent from home; nor was he yet returned: business had called him to a small estate of two or three farms he possessed thirty miles off—business it was requisite he should settle in person, previous to his meditated departure from England. I waited now his return; eager to disburthen my mind, and to seek of him the solution of the enigma that perplexed me. Stay till he comes, reader; and, when I disclose my secret to him, you shall share the confidence. I sought the orchard, driven to its shelter by the wind, which all day had blown strong and full from the south, without, however, bringing a speck of rain. Instead of subsiding as night drew on, it seemed to augment its rush and deepen its roar: the trees blew steadfastly one way, never writhing round, and scarcely tossing back their boughs once in an hour; so continuous was the strain bending their branchy heads northward—the clouds drifted from pole to pole, fast following, mass on mass: no glimpse of blue sky had been visible that July day. It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind, delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering through space. Descending the laurel walk, I faced the wreck of the chestnut-tree; it stood up black and riven: the trunk, split down the centre, gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken from each other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below; though community of vitality was destroyed—the sap could flow no more: their great boughs on each side were dead, and next winter’s tempests would be sure to fell one or both to earth: as yet, however, they might be said to form one tree—a ruin, but an entire ruin. “You did right to hold fast to each other,” I said: as if the monster-splinters were living things, and could hear me. “I think, scathed as you look, and charred and scorched, there must be a little sense of life in you yet, rising out of that adhesion at the faithful, honest roots: you will never have green leaves more—never more see birds making nests and singing idyls in your boughs; the time of pleasure and love is over with you: but you are not desolate: each of you has a comrade to sympathise with him in his decay.” As I looked up at them, the moon appeared momentarily in that part of the sky which filled their fissure; her disk was blood-red and half overcast; she seemed to throw on me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself again instantly in the deep drift of cloud. The wind fell, for a second, round Thornfield; but far away over wood and water, poured a wild, melancholy wail: it was sad to listen to, and I ran off again. Here and there I strayed through the orchard, gathered up the apples with which the grass round the tree roots was thickly strewn; then I employed myself in dividing the ripe from the unripe; I carried them into the house and put them away in the store-room. Then I repaired to the library to ascertain whether the fire was lit, for, though summer, I knew on such a gloomy evening Mr. Rochester would like to see a cheerful hearth when he came in: yes, the fire had been kindled some time, and burnt well. I placed his arm-chair by the chimney-corner: I wheeled the table near it: I let down the curtain, and had the candles brought in ready for lighting. More restless than ever, when I had completed these arrangements I could not sit still, nor even remain in the house: a little time-piece in the room and the old clock in the hall simultaneously struck ten. “How late it grows!” I said. “I will run down to the gates: it is moonlight at intervals; I can see a good way on the road. He may be coming now, and to meet him will save some minutes of suspense.” The wind roared high in the great trees which embowered the gates; but the road as far as I could see, to the right hand and the left, was all still and solitary: save for the shadows of clouds crossing it at intervals as the moon looked out, it was but a long pale line, unvaried by one moving speck. A puerile tear dimmed my eye while I looked—a tear of disappointment and impatience; ashamed of it, I wiped it away. I lingered; the moon shut herself wholly within her chamber, and drew close her curtain of dense cloud: the night grew dark; rain came driving fast on the gale. “I wish he would come! I wish he would come!” I exclaimed, seized with hypochondriac foreboding. I had expected his arrival before tea; now it was dark: what could keep him? Had an accident happened? The event of last night again recurred to me. I interpreted it as a warning of disaster. I feared my hopes were too bright to be realised; and I had enjoyed so much bliss lately that I imagined my fortune had passed its meridian, and must now decline. “Well, I cannot return to the house,” I thought; “I cannot sit by the fireside, while he is abroad in inclement weather: better tire my limbs than strain my heart; I will go forward and meet him.” I set out; I walked fast, but not far: ere I had measured a quarter of a mile, I heard the tramp of hoofs; a horseman came on, full gallop; a dog ran by his side. Away with evil presentiment! It was he: here he was, mounted on Mesrour, followed by Pilot. He saw me; for the moon had opened a blue field in the sky, and rode in it watery bright: he took his hat off, and waved it round his head. I now ran to meet him. “There!” he exclaimed, as he stretched out his hand and bent from the saddle: “You can’t do without me, that is evident. Step on my boot-toe; give me both hands: mount!” I obeyed: joy made me agile: I sprang up before him. A hearty kissing I got for a welcome, and some boastful triumph, which I swallowed as well as I could. He checked himself in his exultation to demand, “But is there anything the matter, Janet, that you come to meet me at such an hour? Is there anything wrong?” “No, but I thought you would never come. I could not bear to wait in the house for you, especially with this rain and wind.” “Rain and wind, indeed! Yes, you are dripping like a mermaid; pull my cloak round you: but I think you are feverish, Jane: both your cheek and hand are burning hot. I ask again, is there anything the matter?” “Nothing now; I am neither afraid nor unhappy.” “Then you have been both?” “Rather: but I’ll tell you all about it by-and-by, sir; and I daresay you will only laugh at me for my pains.” “I’ll laugh at you heartily when to-morrow is past; till then I dare not: my prize is not certain. This is you, who have been as slippery as an eel this last month, and as thorny as a briar-rose? I could not lay a finger anywhere but I was pricked; and now I seem to have gathered up a stray lamb in my arms. You wandered out of the fold to seek your shepherd, did you, Jane?” “I wanted you: but don’t boast. Here we are at Thornfield: now let me get down.” He landed me on the pavement. As John took his horse, and he followed me into the hall, he told me to make haste and put something dry on, and then return to him in the library; and he stopped me, as I made for the staircase, to extort a promise that I would not be long: nor was I long; in five minutes I rejoined him. I found him at supper. “Take a seat and bear me company, Jane: please God, it is the last meal but one you will eat at Thornfield Hall for a long time.” I sat down near him, but told him I could not eat. “Is it because you have the prospect of a journey before you, Jane? Is it the thoughts of going to London that takes away your appetite?” “I cannot see my prospects clearly to-night, sir; and I hardly know what thoughts I have in my head. Everything in life seems unreal.” “Except me: I am substantial enough—touch me.” “You, sir, are the most phantom-like of all: you are a mere dream.” He held out his hand, laughing. “Is that a dream?” said he, placing it close to my eyes. He had a rounded, muscular, and vigorous hand, as well as a long, strong arm. “Yes; though I touch it, it is a dream,” said I, as I put it down from before my face. “Sir, have you finished supper?” “Yes, Jane.” I rang the bell and ordered away the tray. When we were again alone, I stirred the fire, and then took a low seat at my master’s knee. “It is near midnight,” I said. “Yes: but remember, Jane, you promised to wake with me the night before my wedding.” “I did; and I will keep my promise, for an hour or two at least: I have no wish to go to bed.” “Are all your arrangements complete?” “All, sir.” “And on my part likewise,” he returned, “I have settled everything; and we shall leave Thornfield to-morrow, within half-an-hour after our return from church.” “Very well, sir.” “With what an extraordinary smile you uttered that word—‘very well,’ Jane! What a bright spot of colour you have on each cheek! and how strangely your eyes glitter! Are you well?” “I believe I am.” “Believe! What is the matter? Tell me what you feel.” “I could not, sir: no words could tell you what I feel. I wish this present hour would never end: who knows with what fate the next may come charged?” “This is hypochondria, Jane. You have been over-excited, or over-fatigued.” “Do you, sir, feel calm and happy?” “Calm?—no: but happy—to the heart’s core.” I looked up at him to read the signs of bliss in his face: it was ardent and flushed. “Give me your confidence, Jane,” he said: “relieve your mind of any weight that oppresses it, by imparting it to me. What do you fear?—that I shall not prove a good husband?” “It is the idea farthest from my thoughts.” “Are you apprehensive of the new sphere you are about to enter?—of the new life into which you are passing?” “No.” “You puzzle me, Jane: your look and tone of sorrowful audacity perplex and pain me. I want an explanation.” “Then, sir, listen. You were from home last night?” “I was: I know that; and you hinted a while ago at something which had happened in my absence:—nothing, probably, of consequence; but, in short, it has disturbed you. Let me hear it. Mrs. Fairfax has said something, perhaps? or you have overheard the servants talk?—your sensitive self-respect has been wounded?” “No, sir.” It struck twelve—I waited till the time-piece had concluded its silver chime, and the clock its hoarse, vibrating stroke, and then I proceeded. “All day yesterday I was very busy, and very happy in my ceaseless bustle; for I am not, as you seem to think, troubled by any haunting fears about the new sphere, et cetera: I think it a glorious thing to have the hope of living with you, because I love you. No, sir, don’t caress me now—let me talk undisturbed. Yesterday I trusted well in Providence, and believed that events were working together for your good and mine: it was a fine day, if you recollect—the calmness of the air and sky forbade apprehensions respecting your safety or comfort on your journey. I walked a little while on the pavement after tea, thinking of you; and I beheld you in imagination so near me, I scarcely missed your actual presence. I thought of the life that lay before me—_your_ life, sir—an existence more expansive and stirring than my own: as much more so as the depths of the sea to which the brook runs are than the shallows of its own strait channel. I wondered why moralists call this world a dreary wilderness: for me it blossomed like a rose. Just at sunset, the air turned cold and the sky cloudy: I went in, Sophie called me upstairs to look at my wedding-dress, which they had just brought; and under it in the box I found your present—the veil which, in your princely extravagance, you sent for from London: resolved, I suppose, since I would not have jewels, to cheat me into accepting something as costly. I smiled as I unfolded it, and devised how I would tease you about your aristocratic tastes, and your efforts to masque your plebeian bride in the attributes of a peeress. I thought how I would carry down to you the square of unembroidered blond I had myself prepared as a covering for my low-born head, and ask if that was not good enough for a woman who could bring her husband neither fortune, beauty, nor connections. I saw plainly how you would look; and heard your impetuous republican answers, and your haughty disavowal of any necessity on your part to augment your wealth, or elevate your standing, by marrying either a purse or a coronet.” “How well you read me, you witch!” interposed Mr. Rochester: “but what did you find in the veil besides its embroidery? Did you find poison, or a dagger, that you look so mournful now?” “No, no, sir; besides the delicacy and richness of the fabric, I found nothing save Fairfax Rochester’s pride; and that did not scare me, because I am used to the sight of the demon. But, sir, as it grew dark, the wind rose: it blew yesterday evening, not as it blows now—wild and high—but ‘with a sullen, moaning sound’ far more eerie. I wished you were at home. I came into this room, and the sight of the empty chair and fireless hearth chilled me. For some time after I went to bed, I could not sleep—a sense of anxious excitement distressed me. The gale still rising seemed to my ear to muffle a mournful under-sound; whether in the house or abroad I could not at first tell, but it recurred, doubtful yet doleful at every lull; at last I made out it must be some dog howling at a distance. I was glad when it ceased. On sleeping, I continued in dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night. I continued also the wish to be with you, and experienced a strange, regretful consciousness of some barrier dividing us. During all my first sleep, I was following the windings of an unknown road; total obscurity environed me; rain pelted me; I was burdened with the charge of a little child: a very small creature, too young and feeble to walk, and which shivered in my cold arms, and wailed piteously in my ear. I thought, sir, that you were on the road a long way before me; and I strained every nerve to overtake you, and made effort on effort to utter your name and entreat you to stop—but my movements were fettered, and my voice still died away inarticulate; while you, I felt, withdrew farther and farther every moment.” “And these dreams weigh on your spirits now, Jane, when I am close to you? Little nervous subject! Forget visionary woe, and think only of real happiness! You say you love me, Janet: yes—I will not forget that; and you cannot deny it. _Those_ words did not die inarticulate on your lips. I heard them clear and soft: a thought too solemn perhaps, but sweet as music—‘I think it is a glorious thing to have the hope of living with you, Edward, because I love you.’ Do you love me, Jane?—repeat it.” “I do, sir—I do, with my whole heart.” “Well,” he said, after some minutes’ silence, “it is strange; but that sentence has penetrated my breast painfully. Why? I think because you said it with such an earnest, religious energy, and because your upward gaze at me now is the very sublime of faith, truth, and devotion: it is too much as if some spirit were near me. Look wicked, Jane: as you know well how to look: coin one of your wild, shy, provoking smiles; tell me you hate me—tease me, vex me; do anything but move me: I would rather be incensed than saddened.” “I will tease you and vex you to your heart’s content, when I have finished my tale: but hear me to the end.” “I thought, Jane, you had told me all. I thought I had found the source of your melancholy in a dream.” I shook my head. “What! is there more? But I will not believe it to be anything important. I warn you of incredulity beforehand. Go on.” The disquietude of his air, the somewhat apprehensive impatience of his manner, surprised me: but I proceeded. “I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the stately front nothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking. I wandered, on a moonlight night, through the grass-grown enclosure within: here I stumbled over a marble hearth, and there over a fallen fragment of cornice. Wrapped up in a shawl, I still carried the unknown little child: I might not lay it down anywhere, however tired were my arms—however much its weight impeded my progress, I must retain it. I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the road; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years and for a distant country. I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones rolled from under my feet, the ivy branches I grasped gave way, the child clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me; at last I gained the summit. I saw you like a speck on a white track, lessening every moment. The blast blew so strong I could not stand. I sat down on the narrow ledge; I hushed the scared infant in my lap: you turned an angle of the road: I bent forward to take a last look; the wall crumbled; I was shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my balance, fell, and woke.” “Now, Jane, that is all.” “All the preface, sir; the tale is yet to come. On waking, a gleam dazzled my eyes; I thought—Oh, it is daylight! But I was mistaken; it was only candlelight. Sophie, I supposed, had come in. There was a light in the dressing-table, and the door of the closet, where, before going to bed, I had hung my wedding-dress and veil, stood open; I heard a rustling there. I asked, ‘Sophie, what are you doing?’ No one answered; but a form emerged from the closet; it took the light, held it aloft, and surveyed the garments pendent from the portmanteau. ‘Sophie! Sophie!’ I again cried: and still it was silent. I had risen up in bed, I bent forward: first surprise, then bewilderment, came over me; and then my blood crept cold through my veins. Mr. Rochester, this was not Sophie, it was not Leah, it was not Mrs. Fairfax: it was not—no, I was sure of it, and am still—it was not even that strange woman, Grace Poole.” “It must have been one of them,” interrupted my master. “No, sir, I solemnly assure you to the contrary. The shape standing before me had never crossed my eyes within the precincts of Thornfield Hall before; the height, the contour were new to me.” “Describe it, Jane.” “It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell.” “Did you see her face?” “Not at first. But presently she took my veil from its place; she held it up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her own head, and turned to the mirror. At that moment I saw the reflection of the visage and features quite distinctly in the dark oblong glass.” “And how were they?” “Fearful and ghastly to me—oh, sir, I never saw a face like it! It was a discoloured face—it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments!” “Ghosts are usually pale, Jane.” “This, sir, was purple: the lips were swelled and dark; the brow furrowed: the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes. Shall I tell you of what it reminded me?” “You may.” “Of the foul German spectre—the Vampyre.” “Ah!—what did it do?” “Sir, it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and flinging both on the floor, trampled on them.” It removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and flinging both on the floor, trampled on them “Afterwards?” “It drew aside the window-curtain and looked out; perhaps it saw dawn approaching, for, taking the candle, it retreated to the door. Just at my bedside, the figure stopped: the fiery eyes glared upon me—she thrust up her candle close to my face, and extinguished it under my eyes. I was aware her lurid visage flamed over mine, and I lost consciousness: for the second time in my life—only the second time—I became insensible from terror.” “Who was with you when you revived?” “No one, sir, but the broad day. I rose, bathed my head and face in water, drank a long draught; felt that though enfeebled I was not ill, and determined that to none but you would I impart this vision. Now, sir, tell me who and what that woman was?” “The creature of an over-stimulated brain; that is certain. I must be careful of you, my treasure: nerves like yours were not made for rough handling.” “Sir, depend on it, my nerves were not in fault; the thing was real: the transaction actually took place.” “And your previous dreams, were they real too? Is Thornfield Hall a ruin? Am I severed from you by insuperable obstacles? Am I leaving you without a tear—without a kiss—without a word?” “Not yet.” “Am I about to do it? Why, the day is already commenced which is to bind us indissolubly; and when we are once united, there shall be no recurrence of these mental terrors: I guarantee that.” “Mental terrors, sir! I wish I could believe them to be only such: I wish it more now than ever; since even you cannot explain to me the mystery of that awful visitant.” “And since I cannot do it, Jane, it must have been unreal.” “But, sir, when I said so to myself on rising this morning, and when I looked round the room to gather courage and comfort from the cheerful aspect of each familiar object in full daylight, there—on the carpet—I saw what gave the distinct lie to my hypothesis,—the veil, torn from top to bottom in two halves!” I felt Mr. Rochester start and shudder; he hastily flung his arms round me. “Thank God!” he exclaimed, “that if anything malignant did come near you last night, it was only the veil that was harmed. Oh, to think what might have happened!” He drew his breath short, and strained me so close to him, I could scarcely pant. After some minutes’ silence, he continued, cheerily— “Now, Janet, I’ll explain to you all about it. It was half dream, half reality. A woman did, I doubt not, enter your room: and that woman was—must have been—Grace Poole. You call her a strange being yourself: from all you know, you have reason so to call her—what did she do to me? what to Mason? In a state between sleeping and waking, you noticed her entrance and her actions; but feverish, almost delirious as you were, you ascribed to her a goblin appearance different from her own: the long dishevelled hair, the swelled black face, the exaggerated stature, were figments of imagination; results of nightmare: the spiteful tearing of the veil was real: and it is like her. I see you would ask why I keep such a woman in my house: when we have been married a year and a day, I will tell you; but not now. Are you satisfied, Jane? Do you accept my solution of the mystery?” I reflected, and in truth it appeared to me the only possible one: satisfied I was not, but to please him I endeavoured to appear so—relieved, I certainly did feel; so I answered him with a contented smile. And now, as it was long past one, I prepared to leave him. “Does not Sophie sleep with Adèle in the nursery?” he asked, as I lit my candle. “Yes, sir.” “And there is room enough in Adèle’s little bed for you. You must share it with her to-night, Jane: it is no wonder that the incident you have related should make you nervous, and I would rather you did not sleep alone: promise me to go to the nursery.” “I shall be very glad to do so, sir.” “And fasten the door securely on the inside. Wake Sophie when you go upstairs, under pretence of requesting her to rouse you in good time to-morrow; for you must be dressed and have finished breakfast before eight. And now, no more sombre thoughts: chase dull care away, Janet. Don’t you hear to what soft whispers the wind has fallen? and there is no more beating of rain against the window-panes: look here” (he lifted up the curtain)—“it is a lovely night!” It was. Half heaven was pure and stainless: the clouds, now trooping before the wind, which had shifted to the west, were filing off eastward in long, silvered columns. The moon shone peacefully. “Well,” said Mr. Rochester, gazing inquiringly into my eyes, “how is my Janet now?” “The night is serene, sir; and so am I.” “And you will not dream of separation and sorrow to-night; but of happy love and blissful union.” This prediction was but half fulfilled: I did not indeed dream of sorrow, but as little did I dream of joy; for I never slept at all. With little Adèle in my arms, I watched the slumber of childhood—so tranquil, so passionless, so innocent—and waited for the coming day: all my life was awake and astir in my frame: and as soon as the sun rose I rose too. I remember Adèle clung to me as I left her: I remember I kissed her as I loosened her little hands from my neck; and I cried over her with strange emotion, and quitted her because I feared my sobs would break her still sound repose. She seemed the emblem of my past life; and he, I was now to array myself to meet, the dread, but adored, type of my unknown future day. ', 'Sophie came at seven to dress me: she was very long indeed in accomplishing her task; so long that Mr. Rochester, grown, I suppose, impatient of my delay, sent up to ask why I did not come. She was just fastening my veil (the plain square of blond after all) to my hair with a brooch; I hurried from under her hands as soon as I could. “Stop!” she cried in French. “Look at yourself in the mirror: you have not taken one peep.” So I turned at the door: I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike my usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger. “Jane!” called a voice, and I hastened down. I was received at the foot of the stairs by Mr. Rochester. “Lingerer!” he said, “my brain is on fire with impatience, and you tarry so long!” He took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over, pronounced me “fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, but the desire of his eyes,” and then telling me he would give me but ten minutes to eat some breakfast, he rang the bell. One of his lately hired servants, a footman, answered it. “Is John getting the carriage ready?” “Yes, sir.” “Is the luggage brought down?” “They are bringing it down, sir.” “Go you to the church: see if Mr. Wood (the clergyman) and the clerk are there: return and tell me.” The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates; the footman soon returned. “Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice.” “And the carriage?” “The horses are harnessing.” “We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the moment we return: all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped on, and the coachman in his seat.” “Yes, sir.” “Jane, are you ready?” I rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait for or marshal: none but Mr. Rochester and I. Mrs. Fairfax stood in the hall as we passed. I would fain have spoken to her, but my hand was held by a grasp of iron: I was hurried along by a stride I could hardly follow; and to look at Mr. Rochester’s face was to feel that not a second of delay would be tolerated for any purpose. I wonder what other bridegroom ever looked as he did—so bent up to a purpose, so grimly resolute: or who, under such steadfast brows, ever revealed such flaming and flashing eyes. I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the drive, I gazed neither on sky nor earth: my heart was with my eyes; and both seemed migrated into Mr. Rochester’s frame. I wanted to see the invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to fasten a glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts whose force he seemed breasting and resisting. At the churchyard wicket he stopped: he discovered I was quite out of breath. “Am I cruel in my love?” he said. “Delay an instant: lean on me, Jane.” And now I can recall the picture of the grey old house of God rising calm before me, of a rook wheeling round the steeple, of a ruddy morning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of strangers straying amongst the low hillocks and reading the mementoes graven on the few mossy head-stones. I noticed them, because, as they saw us, they passed round to the back of the church; and I doubted not they were going to enter by the side-aisle door and witness the ceremony. By Mr. Rochester they were not observed; he was earnestly looking at my face, from which the blood had, I daresay, momentarily fled: for I felt my forehead dewy, and my cheeks and lips cold. When I rallied, which I soon did, he walked gently with me up the path to the porch. We entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his white surplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him. All was still: two shadows only moved in a remote corner. My conjecture had been correct: the strangers had slipped in before us, and they now stood by the vault of the Rochesters, their backs towards us, viewing through the rails the old time-stained marble tomb, where a kneeling angel guarded the remains of Damer de Rochester, slain at Marston Moor in the time of the civil wars, and of Elizabeth, his wife. Our place was taken at the communion rails. Hearing a cautious step behind me, I glanced over my shoulder: one of the strangers—a gentleman, evidently—was advancing up the chancel. The service began. The explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through; and then the clergyman came a step further forward, and, bending slightly towards Mr. Rochester, went on. “I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed), that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful.” He paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence ever broken by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years. And the clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had held his breath but for a moment, was proceeding: his hand was already stretched towards Mr. Rochester, as his lips unclosed to ask, “Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded wife?”—when a distinct and near voice said— “The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment.” The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute; the clerk did the same; Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled under his feet: taking a firmer footing, and not turning his head or eyes, he said, “Proceed.” Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep but low intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said— “I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been asserted, and evidence of its truth or falsehood.” “The ceremony is quite broken off,” subjoined the voice behind us. “I am in a condition to prove my allegation: an insuperable impediment to this marriage exists.” Mr. Rochester heard, but heeded not: he stood stubborn and rigid, making no movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a hot and strong grasp he had! and how like quarried marble was his pale, firm, massive front at this moment! How his eye shone, still watchful, and yet wild beneath! Mr. Wood seemed at a loss. “What is the nature of the impediment?” he asked. “Perhaps it may be got over—explained away?” “Hardly,” was the answer. “I have called it insuperable, and I speak advisedly.” The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued, uttering each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly— “It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr. Rochester has a wife now living.” My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated to thunder—my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt frost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of swooning. I looked at Mr. Rochester: I made him look at me. His whole face was colourless rock: his eye was both spark and flint. He disavowed nothing: he seemed as if he would defy all things. Without speaking, without smiling, without seeming to recognise in me a human being, he only twined my waist with his arm and riveted me to his side. “Who are you?” he asked of the intruder. “My name is Briggs, a solicitor of —— Street, London.” “And you would thrust on me a wife?” “I would remind you of your lady’s existence, sir, which the law recognises, if you do not.” “Favour me with an account of her—with her name, her parentage, her place of abode.” “Certainly.” Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and read out in a sort of official, nasal voice:— “‘I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October A.D. —— (a date of fifteen years back), Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield Hall, in the county of ——, and of Ferndean Manor, in ——shire, England, was married to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of Jonas Mason, merchant, and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at —— church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. The record of the marriage will be found in the register of that church—a copy of it is now in my possession. Signed, Richard Mason.’” “That—if a genuine document—may prove I have been married, but it does not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still living.” “She was living three months ago,” returned the lawyer. “How do you know?” “I have a witness to the fact, whose testimony even you, sir, will scarcely controvert.” “Produce him—or go to hell.” “I will produce him first—he is on the spot. Mr. Mason, have the goodness to step forward.” Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth; he experienced, too, a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame. The second stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the background, now drew near; a pale face looked over the solicitor’s shoulder—yes, it was Mason himself. Mr. Rochester turned and glared at him. His eye, as I have often said, was a black eye: it had now a tawny, nay, a bloody light in its gloom; and his face flushed—olive cheek and hueless forehead received a glow as from spreading, ascending heart-fire: and he stirred, lifted his strong arm—he could have struck Mason, dashed him on the church-floor, shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his body—but Mason shrank away, and cried faintly, “Good God!” Contempt fell cool on Mr. Rochester—his passion died as if a blight had shrivelled it up: he only asked—“What have _you_ to say?” An inaudible reply escaped Mason’s white lips. “The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again demand, what have _you_ to say?” “Sir—sir,” interrupted the clergyman, “do not forget you are in a sacred place.” Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, “Are you aware, sir, whether or not this gentleman’s wife is still living?” “Courage,” urged the lawyer,—“speak out.” “She is now living at Thornfield Hall,” said Mason, in more articulate tones: “I saw her there last April. I am her brother.” “At Thornfield Hall!” ejaculated the clergyman. “Impossible! I am an old resident in this neighbourhood, sir, and I never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at Thornfield Hall.” I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester’s lips, and he muttered— “No, by God! I took care that none should hear of it—or of her under that name.” He mused—for ten minutes he held counsel with himself: he formed his resolve, and announced it— “Enough! all shall bolt out at once, like the bullet from the barrel. Wood, close your book and take off your surplice; John Green (to the clerk), leave the church: there will be no wedding to-day.” The man obeyed. Mr. Rochester continued, hardily and recklessly: “Bigamy is an ugly word!—I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-manoeuvred me, or Providence has checked me,—perhaps the last. I am little better than a devil at this moment; and, as my pastor there would tell me, deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, even to the quenchless fire and deathless worm. Gentlemen, my plan is broken up:—what this lawyer and his client say is true: I have been married, and the woman to whom I was married lives! You say you never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at the house up yonder, Wood; but I daresay you have many a time inclined your ear to gossip about the mysterious lunatic kept there under watch and ward. Some have whispered to you that she is my bastard half-sister: some, my cast-off mistress. I now inform you that she is my wife, whom I married fifteen years ago,—Bertha Mason by name; sister of this resolute personage, who is now, with his quivering limbs and white cheeks, showing you what a stout heart men may bear. Cheer up, Dick!—never fear me!—I’d almost as soon strike a woman as you. Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!—as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points. I had a charming partner—pure, wise, modest: you can fancy I was a happy man. I went through rich scenes! Oh! my experience has been heavenly, if you only knew it! But I owe you no further explanation. Briggs, Wood, Mason, I invite you all to come up to the house and visit Mrs. Poole’s patient, and _my wife_! You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into espousing, and judge whether or not I had a right to break the compact, and seek sympathy with something at least human. This girl,” he continued, looking at me, “knew no more than you, Wood, of the disgusting secret: she thought all was fair and legal; and never dreamt she was going to be entrapped into a feigned union with a defrauded wretch, already bound to a bad, mad, and embruted partner! Come all of you—follow!” Still holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen came after. At the front door of the hall we found the carriage. “Take it back to the coach-house, John,” said Mr. Rochester coolly; “it will not be wanted to-day.” At our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Adèle, Sophie, Leah, advanced to meet and greet us. “To the right-about—every soul!” cried the master; “away with your congratulations! Who wants them? Not I!—they are fifteen years too late!” He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and still beckoning the gentlemen to follow him, which they did. We mounted the first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third storey: the low, black door, opened by Mr. Rochester’s master-key, admitted us to the tapestried room, with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet. “You know this place, Mason,” said our guide; “she bit and stabbed you here.” He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door: this, too, he opened. In a room without a window, there burnt a fire guarded by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in a saucepan. In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face. “Good-morrow, Mrs. Poole!” said Mr. Rochester. “How are you? and how is your charge to-day?” “We’re tolerable, sir, I thank you,” replied Grace, lifting the boiling mess carefully on to the hob: “rather snappish, but not ’rageous.” A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report: the clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet. “Ah! sir, she sees you!” exclaimed Grace: “you’d better not stay.” “Only a few moments, Grace: you must allow me a few moments.” “Take care then, sir!—for God’s sake, take care!” The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognised well that purple face,—those bloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced. “Keep out of the way,” said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside: “she has no knife now, I suppose, and I’m on my guard.” “One never knows what she has, sir: she is so cunning: it is not in mortal discretion to fathom her craft.” “We had better leave her,” whispered Mason. “Go to the devil!” was his brother-in-law’s recommendation. “’Ware!” cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr. Rochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled. She was a big woman, in stature almost equalling her husband, and corpulent besides: she showed virile force in the contest—more than once she almost throttled him, athletic as he was. He could have settled her with a well-planted blow; but he would not strike: he would only wrestle. At last he mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he pinioned them behind her: with more rope, which was at hand, he bound her to a chair. The operation was performed amidst the fiercest yells and the most convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to the spectators: he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate. “That is _my wife_,” said he. “Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to know—such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure hours! And _this_ is what I wished to have” (laying his hand on my shoulder): “this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon, I wanted her just as a change after that fierce ragout. Wood and Briggs, look at the difference! Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder—this face with that mask—this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of the gospel and man of the law, and remember with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged! Off with you now. I must shut up my prize.” We all withdrew. Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give some further order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as he descended the stair. “You, madam,” said he, “are cleared from all blame: your uncle will be glad to hear it—if, indeed, he should be still living—when Mr. Mason returns to Madeira.” “My uncle! What of him? Do you know him?” “Mr. Mason does. Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of his house for some years. When your uncle received your letter intimating the contemplated union between yourself and Mr. Rochester, Mr. Mason, who was staying at Madeira to recruit his health, on his way back to Jamaica, happened to be with him. Mr. Eyre mentioned the intelligence; for he knew that my client here was acquainted with a gentleman of the name of Rochester. Mr. Mason, astonished and distressed as you may suppose, revealed the real state of matters. Your uncle, I am sorry to say, is now on a sick bed; from which, considering the nature of his disease—decline—and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will ever rise. He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you from the snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason to lose no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage. He referred him to me for assistance. I used all despatch, and am thankful I was not too late: as you, doubtless, must be also. Were I not morally certain that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira, I would advise you to accompany Mr. Mason back; but as it is, I think you had better remain in England till you can hear further, either from or of Mr. Eyre. Have we anything else to stay for?” he inquired of Mr. Mason. “No, no—let us be gone,” was the anxious reply; and without waiting to take leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at the hall door. The clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or reproof, with his haughty parishioner; this duty done, he too departed. I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to which I had now withdrawn. The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded—not to weep, not to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but—mechanically to take off the wedding dress, and replace it by the stuff gown I had worn yesterday, as I thought, for the last time. I then sat down: I felt weak and tired. I leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped on them. And now I thought: till now I had only heard, seen, moved—followed up and down where I was led or dragged—watched event rush on event, disclosure open beyond disclosure: but _now_, _I thought_. The morning had been a quiet morning enough—all except the brief scene with the lunatic: the transaction in the church had not been noisy; there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken, a calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made; some stern, short questions put by Mr. Rochester; answers, explanations given, evidence adduced; an open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master; then the living proof had been seen; the intruders were gone, and all was over. I was in my own room as usual—just myself, without obvious change: nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And yet where was the Jane Eyre of yesterday?—where was her life?—where were her prospects? Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman—almost a bride, was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead—struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at my love: that feeling which was my master’s—which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester’s arms—it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted—confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been; for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me; but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea, and from his presence I must go: _that_ I perceived well. When—how—whither, I could not yet discern; but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful passion: that was balked; he would want me no more. I should fear even to cross his path now: my view must be hateful to him. Oh, how blind had been my eyes! How weak my conduct! My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow. Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead. One idea only still throbbed life-like within me—a remembrance of God: it begot an unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered, but no energy was found to express them— “Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.” It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it—as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips—it came: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, “the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.” ', 'Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I asked, “What am I to do?” But the answer my mind gave—“Leave Thornfield at once”—was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears. I said I could not bear such words now. “That I am not Edward Rochester’s bride is the least part of my woe,” I alleged: “that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master; but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it.” But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony. “Let me be torn away, then” I cried. “Let another help me!” “No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand: your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it.” I rose up suddenly, terror-struck at the solitude which so ruthless a judge haunted,—at the silence which so awful a voice filled. My head swam as I stood erect. I perceived that I was sickening from excitement and inanition; neither meat nor drink had passed my lips that day, for I had taken no breakfast. And, with a strange pang, I now reflected that, long as I had been shut up here, no message had been sent to ask how I was, or to invite me to come down: not even little Adèle had tapped at the door; not even Mrs. Fairfax had sought me. “Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes,” I murmured, as I undrew the bolt and passed out. I stumbled over an obstacle: my head was still dizzy, my sight was dim, and my limbs were feeble. I could not soon recover myself. I fell, but not on to the ground: an outstretched arm caught me. I looked up—I was supported by Mr. Rochester, who sat in a chair across my chamber threshold. “You come out at last,” he said. “Well, I have been waiting for you long, and listening: yet not one movement have I heard, nor one sob: five minutes more of that death-like hush, and I should have forced the lock like a burglar. So you shun me?—you shut yourself up and grieve alone! I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate: I expected a scene of some kind. I was prepared for the hot rain of tears; only I wanted them to be shed on my breast: now a senseless floor has received them, or your drenched handkerchief. But I err: you have not wept at all! I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose, then, your heart has been weeping blood? “Well, Jane! not a word of reproach? Nothing bitter—nothing poignant? Nothing to cut a feeling or sting a passion? You sit quietly where I have placed you, and regard me with a weary, passive look. “Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?” Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot. There was such deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy in his manner; and besides, there was such unchanged love in his whole look and mien—I forgave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my heart’s core. “You know I am a scoundrel, Jane?” ere long he inquired wistfully—wondering, I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness, the result rather of weakness than of will. “Yes, sir.” “Then tell me so roundly and sharply—don’t spare me.” “I cannot: I am tired and sick. I want some water.” He heaved a sort of shuddering sigh, and taking me in his arms, carried me downstairs. At first I did not know to what room he had borne me; all was cloudy to my glazed sight: presently I felt the reviving warmth of a fire; for, summer as it was, I had become icy cold in my chamber. He put wine to my lips; I tasted it and revived; then I ate something he offered me, and was soon myself. I was in the library—sitting in his chair—he was quite near. “If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me,” I thought; “then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester’s. I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave him—I cannot leave him.” “How are you now, Jane?” “Much better, sir; I shall be well soon.” “Taste the wine again, Jane.” I obeyed him; then he put the glass on the table, stood before me, and looked at me attentively. Suddenly he turned away, with an inarticulate exclamation, full of passionate emotion of some kind; he walked fast through the room and came back; he stooped towards me as if to kiss me; but I remembered caresses were now forbidden. I turned my face away and put his aside. “What!—How is this?” he exclaimed hastily. “Oh, I know! you won’t kiss the husband of Bertha Mason? You consider my arms filled and my embraces appropriated?” “At any rate, there is neither room nor claim for me, sir.” “Why, Jane? I will spare you the trouble of much talking; I will answer for you—Because I have a wife already, you would reply.—I guess rightly?” “Yes.” “If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me; you must regard me as a plotting profligate—a base and low rake who has been simulating disinterested love in order to draw you into a snare deliberately laid, and strip you of honour and rob you of self-respect. What do you say to that? I see you can say nothing: in the first place, you are faint still, and have enough to do to draw your breath; in the second place, you cannot yet accustom yourself to accuse and revile me, and besides, the flood-gates of tears are opened, and they would rush out if you spoke much; and you have no desire to expostulate, to upbraid, to make a scene: you are thinking how _to act_—_talking_ you consider is of no use. I know you—I am on my guard.” “Sir, I do not wish to act against you,” I said; and my unsteady voice warned me to curtail my sentence. “Not in _your_ sense of the word, but in _mine_ you are scheming to destroy me. You have as good as said that I am a married man—as a married man you will shun me, keep out of my way: just now you have refused to kiss me. You intend to make yourself a complete stranger to me: to live under this roof only as Adèle’s governess; if ever I say a friendly word to you, if ever a friendly feeling inclines you again to me, you will say,—‘That man had nearly made me his mistress: I must be ice and rock to him;’ and ice and rock you will accordingly become.” I cleared and steadied my voice to reply: “All is changed about me, sir; I must change too—there is no doubt of that; and to avoid fluctuations of feeling, and continual combats with recollections and associations, there is only one way—Adèle must have a new governess, sir.” “Oh, Adèle will go to school—I have settled that already; nor do I mean to torment you with the hideous associations and recollections of Thornfield Hall—this accursed place—this tent of Achan—this insolent vault, offering the ghastliness of living death to the light of the open sky—this narrow stone hell, with its one real fiend, worse than a legion of such as we imagine. Jane, you shall not stay here, nor will I. I was wrong ever to bring you to Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did how it was haunted. I charged them to conceal from you, before I ever saw you, all knowledge of the curse of the place; merely because I feared Adèle never would have a governess to stay if she knew with what inmate she was housed, and my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac elsewhere—though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate. “Concealing the mad-woman’s neighbourhood from you, however, was something like covering a child with a cloak and laying it down near a upas-tree: that demon’s vicinage is poisoned, and always was. But I’ll shut up Thornfield Hall: I’ll nail up the front door and board the lower windows: I’ll give Mrs. Poole two hundred a year to live here with _my wife_, as you term that fearful hag: Grace will do much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby Retreat, to bear her company and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms, when _my wife_ is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on—” “Sir,” I interrupted him, “you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate—with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel—she cannot help being mad.” “Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don’t know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?” “I do indeed, sir.” “Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat—your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me.—But why do I follow that train of ideas? I was talking of removing you from Thornfield. All, you know, is prepared for prompt departure: to-morrow you shall go. I only ask you to endure one more night under this roof, Jane; and then, farewell to its miseries and terrors for ever! I have a place to repair to, which will be a secure sanctuary from hateful reminiscences, from unwelcome intrusion—even from falsehood and slander.” “And take Adèle with you, sir,” I interrupted; “she will be a companion for you.” “What do you mean, Jane? I told you I would send Adèle to school; and what do I want with a child for a companion, and not my own child,—a French dancer’s bastard? Why do you importune me about her! I say, why do you assign Adèle to me for a companion?” “You spoke of a retirement, sir; and retirement and solitude are dull: too dull for you.” “Solitude! solitude!” he reiterated with irritation. “I see I must come to an explanation. I don’t know what sphynx-like expression is forming in your countenance. _You_ are to share my solitude. Do you understand?” I shook my head: it required a degree of courage, excited as he was becoming, even to risk that mute sign of dissent. He had been walking fast about the room, and he stopped, as if suddenly rooted to one spot. He looked at me long and hard: I turned my eyes from him, fixed them on the fire, and tried to assume and maintain a quiet, collected aspect. “Now for the hitch in Jane’s character,” he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. “The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble! By God! I long to exert a fraction of Samson’s strength, and break the entanglement like tow!” He recommenced his walk, but soon again stopped, and this time just before me. “Jane! will you hear reason?” (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear); “because, if you won’t, I’ll try violence.” His voice was hoarse; his look that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild license. I saw that in another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be able to do nothing with him. The present—the passing second of time—was all I had in which to control and restrain him: a movement of repulsion, flight, fear would have sealed my doom,—and his. But I was not afraid: not in the least. I felt an inward power; a sense of influence, which supported me. The crisis was perilous; but not without its charm: such as the Indian, perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I took hold of his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers, and said to him, soothingly— “Sit down; I’ll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you have to say, whether reasonable or unreasonable.” He sat down: but he did not get leave to speak directly. I had been struggling with tears for some time: I had taken great pains to repress them, because I knew he would not like to see me weep. Now, however, I considered it well to let them flow as freely and as long as they liked. If the flood annoyed him, so much the better. So I gave way and cried heartily. Soon I heard him earnestly entreating me to be composed. I said I could not while he was in such a passion. “But I am not angry, Jane: I only love you too well; and you had steeled your little pale face with such a resolute, frozen look, I could not endure it. Hush, now, and wipe your eyes.” His softened voice announced that he was subdued; so I, in my turn, became calm. Now he made an effort to rest his head on my shoulder, but I would not permit it. Then he would draw me to him: no. “Jane! Jane!” he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness it thrilled along every nerve I had; “you don’t love me, then? It was only my station, and the rank of my wife, that you valued? Now that you think me disqualified to become your husband, you recoil from my touch as if I were some toad or ape.” These words cut me: yet what could I do or I say? I ought probably to have done or said nothing; but I was so tortured by a sense of remorse at thus hurting his feelings, I could not control the wish to drop balm where I had wounded. “I _do_ love you,” I said, “more than ever: but I must not show or indulge the feeling: and this is the last time I must express it.” “The last time, Jane! What! do you think you can live with me, and see me daily, and yet, if you still love me, be always cold and distant?” “No, sir; that I am certain I could not; and therefore I see there is but one way: but you will be furious if I mention it.” “Oh, mention it! If I storm, you have the art of weeping.” “Mr. Rochester, I must leave you.” “For how long, Jane? For a few minutes, while you smooth your hair—which is somewhat dishevelled; and bathe your face—which looks feverish?” “I must leave Adèle and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole life: I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange scenes.” “Of course: I told you you should. I pass over the madness about parting from me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to the new existence, it is all right: you shall yet be my wife: I am not married. You shall be Mrs. Rochester—both virtually and nominally. I shall keep only to you so long as you and I live. You shall go to a place I have in the south of France: a whitewashed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. There you shall live a happy, and guarded, and most innocent life. Never fear that I wish to lure you into error—to make you my mistress. Why did you shake your head? Jane, you must be reasonable, or in truth I shall again become frantic.” His voice and hand quivered: his large nostrils dilated; his eye blazed: still I dared to speak. “Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your mistress: to say otherwise is sophistical—is false.” “Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man—you forget that: I am not long-enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and—beware!” He bared his wrist, and offered it to me: the blood was forsaking his cheek and lips, they were growing livid; I was distressed on all hands. To agitate him thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred, was cruel: to yield was out of the question. I did what human beings do instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity—looked for aid to one higher than man: the words “God help me!” burst involuntarily from my lips. “I am a fool!” cried Mr. Rochester suddenly. “I keep telling her I am not married, and do not explain to her why. I forget she knows nothing of the character of that woman, or of the circumstances attending my infernal union with her. Oh, I am certain Jane will agree with me in opinion, when she knows all that I know! Just put your hand in mine, Janet—that I may have the evidence of touch as well as sight, to prove you are near me—and I will in a few words show you the real state of the case. Can you listen to me?” “Yes, sir; for hours if you will.” “I ask only minutes. Jane, did you ever hear or know that I was not the eldest son of my house: that I had once a brother older than I?” “I remember Mrs. Fairfax told me so once.” “And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping man?” “I have understood something to that effect.” “Well, Jane, being so, it was his resolution to keep the property together; he could not bear the idea of dividing his estate and leaving me a fair portion: all, he resolved, should go to my brother, Rowland. Yet as little could he endure that a son of his should be a poor man. I must be provided for by a wealthy marriage. He sought me a partner betimes. Mr. Mason, a West India planter and merchant, was his old acquaintance. He was certain his possessions were real and vast: he made inquiries. Mr. Mason, he found, had a son and daughter; and he learned from him that he could and would give the latter a fortune of thirty thousand pounds: that sufficed. When I left college, I was sent out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me. My father said nothing about her money; but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish Town for her beauty: and this was no lie. I found her a fine woman, in the style of Blanche Ingram: tall, dark, and majestic. Her family wished to secure me because I was of a good race; and so did she. They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom saw her alone, and had very little private conversation with her. She flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and envy me. I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her. There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission. Her relatives encouraged me; competitors piqued me; she allured me: a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was. Oh, I have no respect for myself when I think of that act!—an agony of inward contempt masters me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement in her mind or manners—and, I married her:—gross, grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might have—But let me remember to whom I am speaking. “My bride’s mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead. The honeymoon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut up in a lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too—a complete dumb idiot. The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I cannot hate, whilst I abhor all his kindred, because he has some grains of affection in his feeble mind, shown in the continued interest he takes in his wretched sister, and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me), will probably be in the same state one day. My father and my brother Rowland knew all this; but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds, and joined in the plot against me. “These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger—when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile—when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders—even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt. “Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details: some strong words shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them, and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had, and what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste. “My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four years my father died too. I was rich enough now—yet poor to hideous indigence: a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of me. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings: for the doctors now discovered that _my wife_ was mad—her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity. Jane, you don’t like my narrative; you look almost sick—shall I defer the rest to another day?” “No, sir, finish it now; I pity you—I do earnestly pity you.” “Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment—with which your eyes are now almost overflowing—with which your heart is heaving—with which your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let the daughter have free advent—my arms wait to receive her.” “Now, sir, proceed; what did you do when you found she was mad?” “Jane, I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect was all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the world, I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour; but I resolved to be clean in my own sight—and to the last I repudiated the contamination of her crimes, and wrenched myself from connection with her mental defects. Still, society associated my name and person with hers; I yet saw her and heard her daily: something of her breath (faugh!) mixed with the air I breathed; and besides, I remembered I had once been her husband—that recollection was then, and is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I knew that while she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife; and, though five years my senior (her family and her father had lied to me even in the particular of her age), she was likely to live as long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm in mind. Thus, at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless. “One night I had been awakened by her yells—(since the medical men had pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up)—it was a fiery West Indian night; one of the description that frequently precede the hurricanes of those climates. Being unable to sleep in bed, I got up and opened the window. The air was like sulphur-steams—I could find no refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room; the sea, which I could hear from thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake—black clouds were casting up over it; the moon was setting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball—she threw her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest. I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with such language!—no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she: though two rooms off, I heard every word—the thin partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries. “‘This life,’ said I at last, ‘is hell: this is the air—those are the sounds of the bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver myself from it if I can. The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. Of the fanatic’s burning eternity I have no fear: there is not a future state worse than this present one—let me break away, and go home to God!’ “I said this whilst I knelt down at and unlocked a trunk which contained a brace of loaded pistols: I meant to shoot myself. I only entertained the intention for a moment; for, not being insane, the crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had originated the wish and design of self-destruction, was past in a second. “A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the open casement: the storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed, and the air grew pure. I then framed and fixed a resolution. While I walked under the dripping orange-trees of my wet garden, and amongst its drenched pomegranates and pine-apples, and while the refulgent dawn of the tropics kindled round me—I reasoned thus, Jane—and now listen; for it was true Wisdom that consoled me in that hour, and showed me the right path to follow. “The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed leaves, and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty; my heart, dried up and scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone, and filled with living blood—my being longed for renewal—my soul thirsted for a pure draught. I saw hope revive—and felt regeneration possible. From a flowery arch at the bottom of my garden I gazed over the sea—bluer than the sky: the old world was beyond; clear prospects opened thus:— “‘Go,’ said Hope, ‘and live again in Europe: there it is not known what a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you. You may take the maniac with you to England; confine her with due attendance and precautions at Thornfield: then travel yourself to what clime you will, and form what new tie you like. That woman, who has so abused your long-suffering, so sullied your name, so outraged your honour, so blighted your youth, is not your wife, nor are you her husband. See that she is cared for as her condition demands, and you have done all that God and humanity require of you. Let her identity, her connection with yourself, be buried in oblivion: you are bound to impart them to no living being. Place her in safety and comfort: shelter her degradation with secrecy, and leave her.’ “I acted precisely on this suggestion. My father and brother had not made my marriage known to their acquaintance; because, in the very first letter I wrote to apprise them of the union—having already begun to experience extreme disgust of its consequences, and, from the family character and constitution, seeing a hideous future opening to me—I added an urgent charge to keep it secret: and very soon the infamous conduct of the wife my father had selected for me was such as to make him blush to own her as his daughter-in-law. Far from desiring to publish the connection, he became as anxious to conceal it as myself. “To England, then, I conveyed her; a fearful voyage I had with such a monster in the vessel. Glad was I when I at last got her to Thornfield, and saw her safely lodged in that third-storey room, of whose secret inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild beast’s den—a goblin’s cell. I had some trouble in finding an attendant for her, as it was necessary to select one on whose fidelity dependence could be placed; for her ravings would inevitably betray my secret: besides, she had lucid intervals of days—sometimes weeks—which she filled up with abuse of me. At last I hired Grace Poole from the Grimbsy Retreat. She and the surgeon, Carter (who dressed Mason’s wounds that night he was stabbed and worried), are the only two I have ever admitted to my confidence. Mrs. Fairfax may indeed have suspected something, but she could have gained no precise knowledge as to facts. Grace has, on the whole, proved a good keeper; though, owing partly to a fault of her own, of which it appears nothing can cure her, and which is incident to her harassing profession, her vigilance has been more than once lulled and baffled. The lunatic is both cunning and malignant; she has never failed to take advantage of her guardian’s temporary lapses; once to secrete the knife with which she stabbed her brother, and twice to possess herself of the key of her cell, and issue therefrom in the night-time. On the first of these occasions, she perpetrated the attempt to burn me in my bed; on the second, she paid that ghastly visit to you. I thank Providence, who watched over you, that she then spent her fury on your wedding apparel, which perhaps brought back vague reminiscences of her own bridal days: but on what might have happened, I cannot endure to reflect. When I think of the thing which flew at my throat this morning, hanging its black and scarlet visage over the nest of my dove, my blood curdles—” “And what, sir,” I asked, while he paused, “did you do when you had settled her here? Where did you go?” “What did I do, Jane? I transformed myself into a will-o’-the-wisp. Where did I go? I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the March-spirit. I sought the Continent, and went devious through all its lands. My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent woman, whom I could love: a contrast to the fury I left at Thornfield—” “But you could not marry, sir.” “I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought. It was not my original intention to deceive, as I have deceived you. I meant to tell my tale plainly, and make my proposals openly: and it appeared to me so absolutely rational that I should be considered free to love and be loved, I never doubted some woman might be found willing and able to understand my case and accept me, in spite of the curse with which I was burdened.” “Well, sir?” “When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and you wanted to read the tablet of one’s heart. But before I go on, tell me what you mean by your ‘Well, sir?’ It is a small phrase very frequent with you; and which many a time has drawn me on and on through interminable talk: I don’t very well know why.” “I mean,—What next? How did you proceed? What came of such an event?” “Precisely! and what do you wish to know now?” “Whether you found any one you liked: whether you asked her to marry you; and what she said.” “I can tell you whether I found any one I liked, and whether I asked her to marry me: but what she said is yet to be recorded in the book of Fate. For ten long years I roved about, living first in one capital, then another: sometimes in St. Petersburg; oftener in Paris; occasionally in Rome, Naples, and Florence. Provided with plenty of money and the passport of an old name, I could choose my own society: no circles were closed against me. I sought my ideal of a woman amongst English ladies, French countesses, Italian signoras, and German gräfinnen. I could not find her. Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, I thought I caught a glance, heard a tone, beheld a form, which announced the realisation of my dream: but I was presently undeceived. You are not to suppose that I desired perfection, either of mind or person. I longed only for what suited me—for the antipodes of the Creole: and I longed vainly. Amongst them all I found not one whom, had I been ever so free, I—warned as I was of the risks, the horrors, the loathings of incongruous unions—would have asked to marry me. Disappointment made me reckless. I tried dissipation—never debauchery: that I hated, and hate. That was my Indian Messalina’s attribute: rooted disgust at it and her restrained me much, even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to approach me to her and her vices, and I eschewed it. “Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship of mistresses. The first I chose was Céline Varens—another of those steps which make a man spurn himself when he recalls them. You already know what she was, and how my liaison with her terminated. She had two successors: an Italian, Giacinta, and a German, Clara; both considered singularly handsome. What was their beauty to me in a few weeks? Giacinta was unprincipled and violent: I tired of her in three months. Clara was honest and quiet; but heavy, mindless, and unimpressible: not one whit to my taste. I was glad to give her a sufficient sum to set her up in a good line of business, and so get decently rid of her. But, Jane, I see by your face you are not forming a very favourable opinion of me just now. You think me an unfeeling, loose-principled rake: don’t you?” “I don’t like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir. Did it not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way, first with one mistress and then another? You talk of it as a mere matter of course.” “It was with me; and I did not like it. It was a grovelling fashion of existence: I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is the next worse thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and always by position, inferior: and to live familiarly with inferiors is degrading. I now hate the recollection of the time I passed with Céline, Giacinta, and Clara.” I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching that had ever been instilled into me, as—under any pretext—with any justification—through any temptation—to become the successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterance to this conviction: it was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my heart, that it might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of trial. “Now, Jane, why don’t you say ‘Well, sir?’ I have not done. You are looking grave. You disapprove of me still, I see. But let me come to the point. Last January, rid of all mistresses—in a harsh, bitter frame of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life—corroded with disappointment, sourly disposed against all men, and especially against all _woman_kind (for I began to regard the notion of an intellectual, faithful, loving woman as a mere dream), recalled by business, I came back to England. “On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall. Abhorred spot! I expected no peace—no pleasure there. On a stile in Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself. I passed it as negligently as I did the pollard willow opposite to it: I had no presentiment of what it would be to me; no inward warning that the arbitress of my life—my genius for good or evil—waited there in humble guise. I did not know it, even when, on the occasion of Mesrour’s accident, it came up and gravely offered me help. Childish and slender creature! It seemed as if a linnet had hopped to my foot and proposed to bear me on its tiny wing. I was surly; but the thing would not go: it stood by me with strange perseverance, and looked and spoke with a sort of authority. I must be aided, and by that hand: and aided I was. “When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new—a fresh sap and sense—stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt that this elf must return to me—that it belonged to my house down below—or I could not have felt it pass away from under my hand, and seen it vanish behind the dim hedge, without singular regret. I heard you come home that night, Jane, though probably you were not aware that I thought of you or watched for you. The next day I observed you—myself unseen—for half-an-hour, while you played with Adèle in the gallery. It was a snowy day, I recollect, and you could not go out of doors. I was in my room; the door was ajar: I could both listen and watch. Adèle claimed your outward attention for a while; yet I fancied your thoughts were elsewhere: but you were very patient with her, my little Jane; you talked to her and amused her a long time. When at last she left you, you lapsed at once into deep reverie: you betook yourself slowly to pace the gallery. Now and then, in passing a casement, you glanced out at the thick-falling snow; you listened to the sobbing wind, and again you paced gently on and dreamed. I think those day visions were not dark: there was a pleasurable illumination in your eye occasionally, a soft excitement in your aspect, which told of no bitter, bilious, hypochondriac brooding: your look revealed rather the sweet musings of youth when its spirit follows on willing wings the flight of Hope up and on to an ideal heaven. The voice of Mrs. Fairfax, speaking to a servant in the hall, wakened you: and how curiously you smiled to and at yourself, Janet! There was much sense in your smile: it was very shrewd, and seemed to make light of your own abstraction. It seemed to say—‘My fine visions are all very well, but I must not forget they are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter.’ You ran downstairs and demanded of Mrs. Fairfax some occupation: the weekly house accounts to make up, or something of that sort, I think it was. I was vexed with you for getting out of my sight. “Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you to my presence. An unusual—to me—a perfectly new character I suspected was yours: I desired to search it deeper and know it better. You entered the room with a look and air at once shy and independent: you were quaintly dressed—much as you are now. I made you talk: ere long I found you full of strange contrasts. Your garb and manner were restricted by rule; your air was often diffident, and altogether that of one refined by nature, but absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of making herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or blunder; yet when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing eye to your interlocutor’s face: there was penetration and power in each glance you gave; when plied by close questions, you found ready and round answers. Very soon you seemed to get used to me: I believe you felt the existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross master, Jane; for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquillised your manner: snarl as I would, you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure at my moroseness; you watched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe. I was at once content and stimulated with what I saw: I liked what I had seen, and wished to see more. Yet, for a long time, I treated you distantly, and sought your company rarely. I was an intellectual epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making this novel and piquant acquaintance: besides, I was for a while troubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade—the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem. Moreover, I wished to see whether you would seek me if I shunned you—but you did not; you kept in the schoolroom as still as your own desk and easel; if by chance I met you, you passed me as soon, and with as little token of recognition, as was consistent with respect. Your habitual expression in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful look; not despondent, for you were not sickly; but not buoyant, for you had little hope, and no actual pleasure. I wondered what you thought of me, or if you ever thought of me, and resolved to find this out. “I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your glance, and genial in your manner, when you conversed: I saw you had a social heart; it was the silent schoolroom—it was the tedium of your life—that made you mournful. I permitted myself the delight of being kind to you; kindness stirred emotion soon: your face became soft in expression, your tones gentle; I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful happy accent. I used to enjoy a chance meeting with you, Jane, at this time: there was a curious hesitation in your manner: you glanced at me with a slight trouble—a hovering doubt: you did not know what my caprice might be—whether I was going to play the master and be stern, or the friend and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to simulate the first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such bloom and light and bliss rose to your young, wistful features, I had much ado often to avoid straining you then and there to my heart.” “Don’t talk any more of those days, sir,” I interrupted, furtively dashing away some tears from my eyes; his language was torture to me; for I knew what I must do—and do soon—and all these reminiscences, and these revelations of his feelings only made my work more difficult. “No, Jane,” he returned: “what necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer—the Future so much brighter?” I shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion. “You see now how the case stands—do you not?” he continued. “After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found _you_. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one. “It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you. To tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery: you know now that I had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early instilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before hazarding confidences. This was cowardly: I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do now—opened to you plainly my life of agony—described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier existence—shown to you, not my _resolution_ (that word is weak), but my resistless _bent_ to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity and to give me yours. Jane—give it me now.” A pause. “Why are you silent, Jane?” I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning! Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved; and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce love and idol. One drear word comprised my intolerable duty—“Depart!” “Jane, you understand what I want of you? Just this promise—‘I will be yours, Mr. Rochester.’” “Mr. Rochester, I will _not_ be yours.” Another long silence. “Jane!” recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down with grief, and turned me stone-cold with ominous terror—for this still voice was the pant of a lion rising—“Jane, do you mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go another?” “I do.” “Jane” (bending towards and embracing me), “do you mean it now?” “I do.” “And now?” softly kissing my forehead and cheek. “I do,” extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely. “Oh, Jane, this is bitter! This—this is wicked. It would not be wicked to love me.” “It would to obey you.” A wild look raised his brows—crossed his features: he rose; but he forebore yet. I laid my hand on the back of a chair for support: I shook, I feared—but I resolved. “One instant, Jane. Give one glance to my horrible life when you are gone. All happiness will be torn away with you. What then is left? For a wife I have but the maniac upstairs: as well might you refer me to some corpse in yonder churchyard. What shall I do, Jane? Where turn for a companion and for some hope?” “Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet again there.” “Then you will not yield?” “No.” “Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed?” His voice rose. “I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil.” “Then you snatch love and innocence from me? You fling me back on lust for a passion—vice for an occupation?” “Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself. We were born to strive and endure—you as well as I: do so. You will forget me before I forget you.” “You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I declared I could not change: you tell me to my face I shall change soon. And what a distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is proved by your conduct! Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach? for you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me?” This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. “Oh, comply!” it said. “Think of his misery; think of his danger—look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair—soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for _you_? or who will be injured by what you do?” Still indomitable was the reply—“_I_ care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.” I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so. His fury was wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a moment, whatever followed; he crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped my waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance: physically, I felt, at the moment, powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace: mentally, I still possessed my soul, and with it the certainty of ultimate safety. The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter—often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter—in the eye. My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce face I gave an involuntary sigh; his gripe was painful, and my over-taxed strength almost exhausted. “Never,” said he, as he ground his teeth, “never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!” (And he shook me with the force of his hold.) “I could bend her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage—with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it—the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit—with will and energy, and virtue and purity—that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would: seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like an essence—you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh! come, Jane, come!” As he said this, he released me from his clutch, and only looked at me. The look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain: only an idiot, however, would have succumbed now. I had dared and baffled his fury; I must elude his sorrow: I retired to the door. “You are going, Jane?” “I am going, sir.” “You are leaving me?” “Yes.” “You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?” What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to reiterate firmly, “I am going.” “Jane!” “Mr. Rochester!” “Withdraw, then,—I consent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish. Go up to your own room; think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings—think of me.” He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. “Oh, Jane! my hope—my love—my life!” broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a deep, strong sob. I had already gained the door; but, reader, I walked back—walked back as determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him; I turned his face from the cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I smoothed his hair with my hand. “God bless you, my dear master!” I said. “God keep you from harm and wrong—direct you, solace you—reward you well for your past kindness to me.” “Little Jane’s love would have been my best reward,” he answered; “without it, my heart is broken. But Jane will give me her love: yes—nobly, generously.” Up the blood rushed to his face; forth flashed the fire from his eyes; erect he sprang; he held his arms out; but I evaded the embrace, and at once quitted the room. “Farewell!” was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added, “Farewell for ever!” That night I never thought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the scenes of childhood: I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; that the night was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in this vision, seemed glidingly to mount the wall, and tremblingly to pause in the centre of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head to look: the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I watched her come—watched with the strangest anticipation; as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk. She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart— “My daughter, flee temptation.” “Mother, I will.” So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. It was yet night, but July nights are short: soon after midnight, dawn comes. “It cannot be too early to commence the task I have to fulfil,” thought I. I rose: I was dressed; for I had taken off nothing but my shoes. I knew where to find in my drawers some linen, a locket, a ring. In seeking these articles, I encountered the beads of a pearl necklace Mr. Rochester had forced me to accept a few days ago. I left that; it was not mine: it was the visionary bride’s who had melted in air. The other articles I made up in a parcel; my purse, containing twenty shillings (it was all I had), I put in my pocket: I tied on my straw bonnet, pinned my shawl, took the parcel and my slippers, which I would not put on yet, and stole from my room. “Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!” I whispered, as I glided past her door. “Farewell, my darling Adèle!” I said, as I glanced towards the nursery. No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace her. I had to deceive a fine ear: for aught I knew it might now be listening. I would have got past Mr. Rochester’s chamber without a pause; but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was a heaven—a temporary heaven—in this room for me, if I chose: I had but to go in and to say— “Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till death,” and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of this. That kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with impatience for day. He would send for me in the morning; I should be gone. He would have me sought for: vainly. He would feel himself forsaken; his love rejected: he would suffer; perhaps grow desperate. I thought of this too. My hand moved towards the lock: I caught it back, and glided on. Drearily I wound my way downstairs: I knew what I had to do, and I did it mechanically. I sought the key of the side-door in the kitchen; I sought, too, a phial of oil and a feather; I oiled the key and the lock. I got some water, I got some bread: for perhaps I should have to walk far; and my strength, sorely shaken of late, must not break down. All this I did without one sound. I opened the door, passed out, shut it softly. Dim dawn glimmered in the yard. The great gates were closed and locked; but a wicket in one of them was only latched. Through that I departed: it, too, I shut; and now I was out of Thornfield. A mile off, beyond the fields, lay a road which stretched in the contrary direction to Millcote; a road I had never travelled, but often noticed, and wondered where it led: thither I bent my steps. No reflection was to be allowed now: not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet—so deadly sad—that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank: something like the world when the deluge was gone by. I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I believe it was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I had put on when I left the house, were soon wet with dew. But I looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature. He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block and axe-edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave gaping at the end: and I thought of drear flight and homeless wandering—and oh! with agony I thought of what I left. I could not help it. I thought of him now—in his room—watching the sunrise; hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him and be his. I longed to be his; I panted to return: it was not too late; I could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement. As yet my flight, I was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and be his comforter—his pride; his redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin. Oh, that fear of his self-abandonment—far worse than my abandonment—how it goaded me! It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast; it tore me when I tried to extract it; it sickened me when remembrance thrust it farther in. Birds began singing in brake and copse: birds were faithful to their mates; birds were emblems of love. What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I had no solace from self-approbation: none even from self-respect. I had injured—wounded—left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes. Still I could not turn, nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. As to my own will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled the other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way: fast, fast I went like one delirious. A weakness, beginning inwardly, extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell: I lay on the ground some minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf. I had some fear—or hope—that here I should die: but I was soon up; crawling forwards on my hands and knees, and then again raised to my feet—as eager and as determined as ever to reach the road. When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge; and while I sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coach come on. I stood up and lifted my hand; it stopped. I asked where it was going: the driver named a place a long way off, and where I was sure Mr. Rochester had no connections. I asked for what sum he would take me there; he said thirty shillings; I answered I had but twenty; well, he would try to make it do. He further gave me leave to get into the inside, as the vehicle was empty: I entered, was shut in, and it rolled on its way. Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love. ', 'Two days are passed. It is a summer evening; the coachman has set me down at a place called Whitcross; he could take me no farther for the sum I had given, and I was not possessed of another shilling in the world. The coach is a mile off by this time; I am alone. At this moment I discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of the coach, where I had placed it for safety; there it remains, there it must remain; and now, I am absolutely destitute. Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar set up where four roads meet: whitewashed, I suppose, to be more obvious at a distance and in darkness. Four arms spring from its summit: the nearest town to which these point is, according to the inscription, distant ten miles; the farthest, above twenty. From the well-known names of these towns I learn in what county I have lighted; a north-midland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with mountain: this I see. There are great moors behind and on each hand of me; there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet. The population here must be thin, and I see no passengers on these roads: they stretch out east, west, north, and south—white, broad, lonely; they are all cut in the moor, and the heather grows deep and wild to their very verge. Yet a chance traveller might pass by; and I wish no eye to see me now: strangers would wonder what I am doing, lingering here at the sign-post, evidently objectless and lost. I might be questioned: I could give no answer but what would sound incredible and excite suspicion. Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment—not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are—none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask repose. I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of moor were about me; the crag protected my head: the sky was over that. Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here: I had a vague dread that wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or poacher might discover me. If a gust of wind swept the waste, I looked up, fearing it was the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled, I imagined it a man. Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however, and calmed by the deep silence that reigned as evening declined at nightfall, I took confidence. As yet I had not thought; I had only listened, watched, dreaded; now I regained the faculty of reflection. What was I to do? Where to go? Oh, intolerable questions, when I could do nothing and go nowhere!—when a long way must yet be measured by my weary, trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation—when cold charity must be entreated before I could get a lodging: reluctant sympathy importuned, almost certain repulse incurred, before my tale could be listened to, or one of my wants relieved! I touched the heath: it was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer day. I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious softness; no breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness. To-night, at least, I would be her guest, as I was her child: my mother would lodge me without money and without price. I had one morsel of bread yet: the remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed through at noon with a stray penny—my last coin. I saw ripe bilberries gleaming here and there, like jet beads in the heath: I gathered a handful and ate them with the bread. My hunger, sharp before, was, if not satisfied, appeased by this hermit’s meal. I said my evening prayers at its conclusion, and then chose my couch. I said my evening prayers Beside the crag the heath was very deep: when I lay down my feet were buried in it; rising high on each side, it left only a narrow space for the night-air to invade. I folded my shawl double, and spread it over me for a coverlet; a low, mossy swell was my pillow. Thus lodged, I was not, at least at the commencement of the night, cold. My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. It plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords. It trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom; it bemoaned him with bitter pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and, impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him. Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky-way. Remembering what it was—what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light—I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe: he was God’s, and by God would he be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long in sleep forgot sorrow. But next day, Want came to me pale and bare. Long after the little birds had left their nests; long after bees had come in the sweet prime of day to gather the heath honey before the dew was dried—when the long morning shadows were curtailed, and the sun filled earth and sky—I got up, and I looked round me. What a still, hot, perfect day! What a golden desert this spreading moor! Everywhere sunshine. I wished I could live in it and on it. I saw a lizard run over the crag; I saw a bee busy among the sweet bilberries. I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard, that I might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here. But I was a human being, and had a human being’s wants: I must not linger where there was nothing to supply them. I rose; I looked back at the bed I had left. Hopeless of the future, I wished but this—that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness. Life, however, was yet in my possession, with all its requirements, and pains, and responsibilities. The burden must be carried; the want provided for; the suffering endured; the responsibility fulfilled. I set out. Whitcross regained, I followed a road which led from the sun, now fervent and high. By no other circumstance had I will to decide my choice. I walked a long time, and when I thought I had nearly done enough, and might conscientiously yield to the fatigue that almost overpowered me—might relax this forced action, and, sitting down on a stone I saw near, submit resistlessly to the apathy that clogged heart and limb—I heard a bell chime—a church bell. I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic hills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire. All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture-fields, and cornfields, and wood; and a glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain, the sombre woodland, the clear and sunny lea. Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me, I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill, and not far beyond were two cows and their drover. Human life and human labour were near. I must struggle on: strive to live and bend to toil like the rest. About two o’clock P.M. I entered the village. At the bottom of its one street there was a little shop with some cakes of bread in the window. I coveted a cake of bread. With that refreshment I could perhaps regain a degree of energy: without it, it would be difficult to proceed. The wish to have some strength and some vigour returned to me as soon as I was amongst my fellow-beings. I felt it would be degrading to faint with hunger on the causeway of a hamlet. Had I nothing about me I could offer in exchange for one of these rolls? I considered. I had a small silk handkerchief tied round my throat; I had my gloves. I could hardly tell how men and women in extremities of destitution proceeded. I did not know whether either of these articles would be accepted: probably they would not; but I must try. I entered the shop: a woman was there. Seeing a respectably-dressed person, a lady as she supposed, she came forward with civility. How could she serve me? I was seized with shame: my tongue would not utter the request I had prepared. I dared not offer her the half-worn gloves, the creased handkerchief: besides, I felt it would be absurd. I only begged permission to sit down a moment, as I was tired. Disappointed in the expectation of a customer, she coolly acceded to my request. She pointed to a seat; I sank into it. I felt sorely urged to weep; but conscious how unseasonable such a manifestation would be, I restrained it. Soon I asked her “if there were any dressmaker or plain-workwoman in the village?” “Yes; two or three. Quite as many as there was employment for.” I reflected. I was driven to the point now. I was brought face to face with Necessity. I stood in the position of one without a resource, without a friend, without a coin. I must do something. What? I must apply somewhere. Where? “Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant was wanted?” “Nay; she couldn’t say.” “What was the chief trade in this place? What did most of the people do?” “Some were farm labourers; a good deal worked at Mr. Oliver’s needle-factory, and at the foundry.” “Did Mr. Oliver employ women?” “Nay; it was men’s work.” “And what do the women do?” “I knawn’t,” was the answer. “Some does one thing, and some another. Poor folk mun get on as they can.” She seemed to be tired of my questions: and, indeed, what claim had I to importune her? A neighbour or two came in; my chair was evidently wanted. I took leave. I passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the right hand and to the left; but I could discover no pretext, nor see an inducement to enter any. I rambled round the hamlet, going sometimes to a little distance and returning again, for an hour or more. Much exhausted, and suffering greatly now for want of food, I turned aside into a lane and sat down under the hedge. Ere many minutes had elapsed, I was again on my feet, however, and again searching something—a resource, or at least an informant. A pretty little house stood at the top of the lane, with a garden before it, exquisitely neat and brilliantly blooming. I stopped at it. What business had I to approach the white door or touch the glittering knocker? In what way could it possibly be the interest of the inhabitants of that dwelling to serve me? Yet I drew near and knocked. A mild-looking, cleanly-attired young woman opened the door. In such a voice as might be expected from a hopeless heart and fainting frame—a voice wretchedly low and faltering—I asked if a servant was wanted here? “No,” said she; “we do not keep a servant.” “Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind?” I continued. “I am a stranger, without acquaintance in this place. I want some work: no matter what.” But it was not her business to think for me, or to seek a place for me: besides, in her eyes, how doubtful must have appeared my character, position, tale. She shook her head, she “was sorry she could give me no information,” and the white door closed, quite gently and civilly: but it shut me out. If she had held it open a little longer, I believe I should have begged a piece of bread; for I was now brought low. I could not bear to return to the sordid village, where, besides, no prospect of aid was visible. I should have longed rather to deviate to a wood I saw not far off, which appeared in its thick shade to offer inviting shelter; but I was so sick, so weak, so gnawed with nature’s cravings, instinct kept me roaming round abodes where there was a chance of food. Solitude would be no solitude—rest no rest—while the vulture, hunger, thus sank beak and talons in my side. I drew near houses; I left them, and came back again, and again I wandered away: always repelled by the consciousness of having no claim to ask—no right to expect interest in my isolated lot. Meantime, the afternoon advanced, while I thus wandered about like a lost and starving dog. In crossing a field, I saw the church spire before me: I hastened towards it. Near the churchyard, and in the middle of a garden, stood a well-built though small house, which I had no doubt was the parsonage. I remembered that strangers who arrive at a place where they have no friends, and who want employment, sometimes apply to the clergyman for introduction and aid. It is the clergyman’s function to help—at least with advice—those who wished to help themselves. I seemed to have something like a right to seek counsel here. Renewing then my courage, and gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed on. I reached the house, and knocked at the kitchen-door. An old woman opened: I asked was this the parsonage? “Yes.” “Was the clergyman in?” “No.” “Would he be in soon?” “No, he was gone from home.” “To a distance?” “Not so far—happen three mile. He had been called away by the sudden death of his father: he was at Marsh End now, and would very likely stay there a fortnight longer.” “Was there any lady of the house?” “Nay, there was naught but her, and she was housekeeper;” and of her, reader, I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I was sinking; I could not yet beg; and again I crawled away. Once more I took off my handkerchief—once more I thought of the cakes of bread in the little shop. Oh, for but a crust! for but one mouthful to allay the pang of famine! Instinctively I turned my face again to the village; I found the shop again, and I went in; and though others were there besides the woman I ventured the request—“Would she give me a roll for this handkerchief?” She looked at me with evident suspicion: “Nay, she never sold stuff i’ that way.” Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again refused. “How could she tell where I had got the handkerchief?” she said. “Would she take my gloves?” “No! what could she do with them?” Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral degradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on. I blamed none of those who repulsed me. I felt it was what was to be expected, and what could not be helped: an ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion; a well-dressed beggar inevitably so. To be sure, what I begged was employment; but whose business was it to provide me with employment? Not, certainly, that of persons who saw me then for the first time, and who knew nothing about my character. And as to the woman who would not take my handkerchief in exchange for her bread, why, she was right, if the offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable. Let me condense now. I am sick of the subject. A little before dark I passed a farm-house, at the open door of which the farmer was sitting, eating his supper of bread and cheese. I stopped and said— “Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry.” He cast on me a glance of surprise; but without answering, he cut a thick slice from his loaf, and gave it to me. I imagine he did not think I was a beggar, but only an eccentric sort of lady, who had taken a fancy to his brown loaf. As soon as I was out of sight of his house, I sat down and ate it. I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in the wood I have before alluded to. But my night was wretched, my rest broken: the ground was damp, the air cold: besides, intruders passed near me more than once, and I had again and again to change my quarters: no sense of safety or tranquillity befriended me. Towards morning it rained; the whole of the following day was wet. Do not ask me, reader, to give a minute account of that day; as before, I sought work; as before, I was repulsed; as before, I starved; but once did food pass my lips. At the door of a cottage I saw a little girl about to throw a mess of cold porridge into a pig trough. “Will you give me that?” I asked. “Will you give me that?” I asked She stared at me. “Mother!” she exclaimed, “there is a woman wants me to give her these porridge.” “Well lass,” replied a voice within, “give it her if she’s a beggar. T’ pig doesn’t want it.” The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it ravenously. As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path, which I had been pursuing an hour or more. “My strength is quite failing me,” I said in a soliloquy. “I feel I cannot go much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night? While the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground? I fear I cannot do otherwise: for who will receive me? But it will be very dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this sense of desolation—this total prostration of hope. In all likelihood, though, I should die before morning. And why cannot I reconcile myself to the prospect of death? Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life? Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is living: and then, to die of want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively. Oh, Providence! sustain me a little longer! Aid!—direct me!” My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape. I saw I had strayed far from the village: it was quite out of sight. The very cultivation surrounding it had disappeared. I had, by cross-ways and by-paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland; and now, only a few fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which they were scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and the dusky hill. “Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented road,” I reflected. “And far better that crows and ravens—if any ravens there be in these regions—should pick my flesh from my bones, than that they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper’s grave.” To the hill, then, I turned. I reached it. It remained now only to find a hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden, if not secure. But all the surface of the waste looked level. It showed no variation but of tint: green, where rush and moss overgrew the marshes; black, where the dry soil bore only heath. Dark as it was getting, I could still see these changes, though but as mere alternations of light and shade; for colour had faded with the daylight. My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor-edge, vanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in among the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up. “That is an _ignis fatuus_,” was my first thought; and I expected it would soon vanish. It burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing. “Is it, then, a bonfire just kindled?” I questioned. I watched to see whether it would spread: but no; as it did not diminish, so it did not enlarge. “It may be a candle in a house,” I then conjectured; “but if so, I can never reach it. It is much too far away: and were it within a yard of me, what would it avail? I should but knock at the door to have it shut in my face.” And I sank down where I stood, and hid my face against the ground. I lay still a while: the night-wind swept over the hill and over me, and died moaning in the distance; the rain fell fast, wetting me afresh to the skin. Could I but have stiffened to the still frost—the friendly numbness of death—it might have pelted on; I should not have felt it; but my yet living flesh shuddered at its chilling influence. I rose ere long. The light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain. I tried to walk again: I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards it. It led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog, which would have been impassable in winter, and was splashy and shaking even now, in the height of summer. Here I fell twice; but as often I rose and rallied my faculties. This light was my forlorn hope: I must gain it. Having crossed the marsh, I saw a trace of white over the moor. I approached it; it was a road or a track: it led straight up to the light, which now beamed from a sort of knoll, amidst a clump of trees—firs, apparently, from what I could distinguish of the character of their forms and foliage through the gloom. My star vanished as I drew near: some obstacle had intervened between me and it. I put out my hand to feel the dark mass before me: I discriminated the rough stones of a low wall—above it, something like palisades, and within, a high and prickly hedge. I groped on. Again a whitish object gleamed before me: it was a gate—a wicket; it moved on its hinges as I touched it. On each side stood a sable bush—holly or yew. Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house rose to view, black, low, and rather long; but the guiding light shone nowhere. All was obscurity. Were the inmates retired to rest? I feared it must be so. In seeking the door, I turned an angle: there shot out the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged panes of a very small latticed window, within a foot of the ground, made still smaller by the growth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose leaves clustered thick over the portion of the house wall in which it was set. The aperture was so screened and narrow, that curtain or shutter had been deemed unnecessary; and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of foliage shooting over it, I could see all within. I could see clearly a room with a sanded floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with pewter plates ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing peat-fire. I could see a clock, a white deal table, some chairs. The candle, whose ray had been my beacon, burnt on the table; and by its light an elderly woman, somewhat rough-looking, but scrupulously clean, like all about her, was knitting a stocking. I noticed these objects cursorily only—in them there was nothing extraordinary. A group of more interest appeared near the hearth, sitting still amidst the rosy peace and warmth suffusing it. Two young, graceful women—ladies in every point—sat, one in a low rocking-chair, the other on a lower stool; both wore deep mourning of crape and bombazeen, which sombre garb singularly set off very fair necks and faces: a large old pointer dog rested its massive head on the knee of one girl—in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat. A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants! Who were they? They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the table; for she looked like a rustic, and they were all delicacy and cultivation. I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs: and yet, as I gazed on them, I seemed intimate with every lineament. I cannot call them handsome—they were too pale and grave for the word: as they each bent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost to severity. A stand between them supported a second candle and two great volumes, to which they frequently referred, comparing them, seemingly, with the smaller books they held in their hands, like people consulting a dictionary to aid them in the task of translation. This scene was as silent as if all the figures had been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture: so hushed was it, I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock tick in its obscure corner; and I even fancied I could distinguish the click-click of the woman’s knitting-needles. When, therefore, a voice broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me. “Listen, Diana,” said one of the absorbed students; “Franz and old Daniel are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream from which he has awakened in terror—listen!” And in a low voice she read something, of which not one word was intelligible to me; for it was in an unknown tongue—neither French nor Latin. Whether it were Greek or German I could not tell. “That is strong,” she said, when she had finished: “I relish it.” The other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated, while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read. At a later day, I knew the language and the book; therefore, I will here quote the line: though, when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on sounding brass to me—conveying no meaning:— “‘Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.’ Good! good!” she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled. “There you have a dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you! The line is worth a hundred pages of fustian. ‘Ich wäge die Gedanken in der Schale meines Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.’ I like it!” Both were again silent. “Is there ony country where they talk i’ that way?” asked the old woman, looking up from her knitting. “Yes, Hannah—a far larger country than England, where they talk in no other way.” “Well, for sure case, I knawn’t how they can understand t’ one t’other: and if either o’ ye went there, ye could tell what they said, I guess?” “We could probably tell something of what they said, but not all—for we are not as clever as you think us, Hannah. We don’t speak German, and we cannot read it without a dictionary to help us.” “And what good does it do you?” “We mean to teach it some time—or at least the elements, as they say; and then we shall get more money than we do now.” “Varry like: but give ower studying; ye’ve done enough for to-night.” “I think we have: at least I’m tired. Mary, are you?” “Mortally: after all, it’s tough work fagging away at a language with no master but a lexicon.” “It is, especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious Deutsch. I wonder when St. John will come home.” “Surely he will not be long now: it is just ten (looking at a little gold watch she drew from her girdle). It rains fast, Hannah: will you have the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?” The woman rose: she opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage: soon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room; she presently came back. “Ah, childer!” said she, “it fair troubles me to go into yond’ room now: it looks so lonesome wi’ the chair empty and set back in a corner.” She wiped her eyes with her apron: the two girls, grave before, looked sad now. “But he is in a better place,” continued Hannah: “we shouldn’t wish him here again. And then, nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had.” “You say he never mentioned us?” inquired one of the ladies. “He hadn’t time, bairn: he was gone in a minute, was your father. He had been a bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify; and when Mr. St. John asked if he would like either o’ ye to be sent for, he fair laughed at him. He began again with a bit of a heaviness in his head the next day—that is, a fortnight sin’—and he went to sleep and niver wakened: he wor a’most stark when your brother went into t’ chamber and fand him. Ah, childer! that’s t’ last o’ t’ old stock—for ye and Mr. St. John is like of different soart to them ’at’s gone; for all your mother wor mich i’ your way, and a’most as book-learned. She wor the pictur’ o’ ye, Mary: Diana is more like your father.” I thought them so similar I could not tell where the old servant (for such I now concluded her to be) saw the difference. Both were fair complexioned and slenderly made; both possessed faces full of distinction and intelligence. One, to be sure, had hair a shade darker than the other, and there was a difference in their style of wearing it; Mary’s pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth: Diana’s duskier tresses covered her neck with thick curls. The clock struck ten. “Ye’ll want your supper, I am sure,” observed Hannah; “and so will Mr. St. John when he comes in.” And she proceeded to prepare the meal. The ladies rose; they seemed about to withdraw to the parlour. Till this moment, I had been so intent on watching them, their appearance and conversation had excited in me so keen an interest, I had half-forgotten my own wretched position: now it recurred to me. More desolate, more desperate than ever, it seemed from contrast. And how impossible did it appear to touch the inmates of this house with concern on my behalf; to make them believe in the truth of my wants and woes—to induce them to vouchsafe a rest for my wanderings! As I groped out the door, and knocked at it hesitatingly, I felt that last idea to be a mere chimera. Hannah opened. “What do you want?” she inquired, in a voice of surprise, as she surveyed me by the light of the candle she held. “May I speak to your mistresses?” I said. “You had better tell me what you have to say to them. Where do you come from?” “I am a stranger.” “What is your business here at this hour?” “I want a night’s shelter in an out-house or anywhere, and a morsel of bread to eat.” Distrust, the very feeling I dreaded, appeared in Hannah’s face. “I’ll give you a piece of bread,” she said, after a pause; “but we can’t take in a vagrant to lodge. It isn’t likely.” “Do let me speak to your mistresses.” “No, not I. What can they do for you? You should not be roving about now; it looks very ill.” “But where shall I go if you drive me away? What shall I do?” “Oh, I’ll warrant you know where to go and what to do. Mind you don’t do wrong, that’s all. Here is a penny; now go—” “A penny cannot feed me, and I have no strength to go farther. Don’t shut the door:—oh, don’t, for God’s sake!” “I must; the rain is driving in—” “Tell the young ladies. Let me see them—” “Indeed, I will not. You are not what you ought to be, or you wouldn’t make such a noise. Move off.” “But I must die if I am turned away.” “Not you. I’m fear’d you have some ill plans agate, that bring you about folk’s houses at this time o’ night. If you’ve any followers—housebreakers or such like—anywhere near, you may tell them we are not by ourselves in the house; we have a gentleman, and dogs, and guns.” Here the honest but inflexible servant clapped the door to and bolted it within. This was the climax. A pang of exquisite suffering—a throe of true despair—rent and heaved my heart. Worn out, indeed, I was; not another step could I stir. I sank on the wet doorstep: I groaned—I wrung my hands—I wept in utter anguish. Oh, this spectre of death! Oh, this last hour, approaching in such horror! Alas, this isolation—this banishment from my kind! Not only the anchor of hope, but the footing of fortitude was gone—at least for a moment; but the last I soon endeavoured to regain. “I can but die,” I said, “and I believe in God. Let me try to wait His will in silence.” These words I not only thought, but uttered; and thrusting back all my misery into my heart, I made an effort to compel it to remain there—dumb and still. “All men must die,” said a voice quite close at hand; “but all are not condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would be if you perished here of want.” “Who or what speaks?” I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, and incapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid. A form was near—what form, the pitch-dark night and my enfeebled vision prevented me from distinguishing. With a loud long knock, the new-comer appealed to the door. “Is it you, Mr. St. John?” cried Hannah. “Yes—yes; open quickly.” “Well, how wet and cold you must be, such a wild night as it is! Come in—your sisters are quite uneasy about you, and I believe there are bad folks about. There has been a beggar-woman—I declare she is not gone yet!—laid down there. Get up! for shame! Move off, I say!” “Hush, Hannah! I have a word to say to the woman. You have done your duty in excluding, now let me do mine in admitting her. I was near, and listened to both you and her. I think this is a peculiar case—I must at least examine into it. Young woman, rise, and pass before me into the house.” Hush, Hannah; I have a word to say to the woman With difficulty I obeyed him. Presently I stood within that clean, bright kitchen—on the very hearth—trembling, sickening; conscious of an aspect in the last degree ghastly, wild, and weather-beaten. The two ladies, their brother, Mr. St. John, the old servant, were all gazing at me. “St. John, who is it?” I heard one ask. “I cannot tell: I found her at the door,” was the reply. “She does look white,” said Hannah. “As white as clay or death,” was responded. “She will fall: let her sit.” And indeed my head swam: I dropped, but a chair received me. I still possessed my senses, though just now I could not speak. “Perhaps a little water would restore her. Hannah, fetch some. But she is worn to nothing. How very thin, and how very bloodless!” “A mere spectre!” “Is she ill, or only famished?” “Famished, I think. Hannah, is that milk? Give it me, and a piece of bread.” Diana (I knew her by the long curls which I saw drooping between me and the fire as she bent over me) broke some bread, dipped it in milk, and put it to my lips. Her face was near mine: I saw there was pity in it, and I felt sympathy in her hurried breathing. In her simple words, too, the same balm-like emotion spoke: “Try to eat.” “Yes—try,” repeated Mary gently; and Mary’s hand removed my sodden bonnet and lifted my head. I tasted what they offered me: feebly at first, eagerly soon. “Not too much at first—restrain her,” said the brother; “she has had enough.” And he withdrew the cup of milk and the plate of bread. “A little more, St. John—look at the avidity in her eyes.” “No more at present, sister. Try if she can speak now—ask her her name.” I felt I could speak, and I answered—“My name is Jane Elliott.” Anxious as ever to avoid discovery, I had before resolved to assume an _alias_. “And where do you live? Where are your friends?” I was silent. “Can we send for any one you know?” I shook my head. “What account can you give of yourself?” Somehow, now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house, and once was brought face to face with its owners, I felt no longer outcast, vagrant, and disowned by the wide world. I dared to put off the mendicant—to resume my natural manner and character. I began once more to know myself; and when Mr. St. John demanded an account—which at present I was far too weak to render—I said after a brief pause— “Sir, I can give you no details to-night.” “But what, then,” said he, “do you expect me to do for you?” “Nothing,” I replied. My strength sufficed for but short answers. Diana took the word— “Do you mean,” she asked, “that we have now given you what aid you require? and that we may dismiss you to the moor and the rainy night?” I looked at her. She had, I thought, a remarkable countenance, instinct both with power and goodness. I took sudden courage. Answering her compassionate gaze with a smile, I said—“I will trust you. If I were a masterless and stray dog, I know that you would not turn me from your hearth to-night: as it is, I really have no fear. Do with me and for me as you like; but excuse me from much discourse—my breath is short—I feel a spasm when I speak.” All three surveyed me, and all three were silent. “Hannah,” said Mr. St. John, at last, “let her sit there at present, and ask her no questions; in ten minutes more, give her the remainder of that milk and bread. Mary and Diana, let us go into the parlour and talk the matter over.” They withdrew. Very soon one of the ladies returned—I could not tell which. A kind of pleasant stupor was stealing over me as I sat by the genial fire. In an undertone she gave some directions to Hannah. Ere long, with the servant’s aid, I contrived to mount a staircase; my dripping clothes were removed; soon a warm, dry bed received me. I thanked God—experienced amidst unutterable exhaustion a glow of grateful joy—and slept. ', 'The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is very dim in my mind. I can recall some sensations felt in that interval; but few thoughts framed, and no actions performed. I knew I was in a small room and in a narrow bed. To that bed I seemed to have grown; I lay on it motionless as a stone; and to have torn me from it would have been almost to kill me. I took no note of the lapse of time—of the change from morning to noon, from noon to evening. I observed when any one entered or left the apartment: I could even tell who they were; I could understand what was said when the speaker stood near to me; but I could not answer; to open my lips or move my limbs was equally impossible. Hannah, the servant, was my most frequent visitor. Her coming disturbed me. I had a feeling that she wished me away: that she did not understand me or my circumstances; that she was prejudiced against me. Diana and Mary appeared in the chamber once or twice a day. They would whisper sentences of this sort at my bedside— “It is very well we took her in.” “Yes; she would certainly have been found dead at the door in the morning had she been left out all night. I wonder what she has gone through?” “Strange hardships, I imagine—poor, emaciated, pallid wanderer!” “She is not an uneducated person, I should think, by her manner of speaking; her accent was quite pure; and the clothes she took off, though splashed and wet, were little worn and fine.” “She has a peculiar face; fleshless and haggard as it is, I rather like it; and when in good health and animated, I can fancy her physiognomy would be agreeable.” Never once in their dialogues did I hear a syllable of regret at the hospitality they had extended to me, or of suspicion of, or aversion to, myself. I was comforted. Mr. St. John came but once: he looked at me, and said my state of lethargy was the result of reaction from excessive and protracted fatigue. He pronounced it needless to send for a doctor: nature, he was sure, would manage best, left to herself. He said every nerve had been overstrained in some way, and the whole system must sleep torpid a while. There was no disease. He imagined my recovery would be rapid enough when once commenced. These opinions he delivered in a few words, in a quiet, low voice; and added, after a pause, in the tone of a man little accustomed to expansive comment, “Rather an unusual physiognomy; certainly, not indicative of vulgarity or degradation.” “Far otherwise,” responded Diana. “To speak truth, St. John, my heart rather warms to the poor little soul. I wish we may be able to benefit her permanently.” “That is hardly likely,” was the reply. “You will find she is some young lady who has had a misunderstanding with her friends, and has probably injudiciously left them. We may, perhaps, succeed in restoring her to them, if she is not obstinate: but I trace lines of force in her face which make me sceptical of her tractability.” He stood considering me some minutes; then added, “She looks sensible, but not at all handsome.” “She is so ill, St. John.” “Ill or well, she would always be plain. The grace and harmony of beauty are quite wanting in those features.” On the third day I was better; on the fourth, I could speak, move, rise in bed, and turn. Hannah had brought me some gruel and dry toast, about, as I supposed, the dinner-hour. I had eaten with relish: the food was good—void of the feverish flavour which had hitherto poisoned what I had swallowed. When she left me, I felt comparatively strong and revived: ere long satiety of repose and desire for action stirred me. I wished to rise; but what could I put on? Only my damp and bemired apparel; in which I had slept on the ground and fallen in the marsh. I felt ashamed to appear before my benefactors so clad. I was spared the humiliation. On a chair by the bedside were all my own things, clean and dry. My black silk frock hung against the wall. The traces of the bog were removed from it; the creases left by the wet smoothed out: it was quite decent. My very shoes and stockings were purified and rendered presentable. There were the means of washing in the room, and a comb and brush to smooth my hair. After a weary process, and resting every five minutes, I succeeded in dressing myself. My clothes hung loose on me; for I was much wasted, but I covered deficiencies with a shawl, and once more, clean and respectable looking—no speck of the dirt, no trace of the disorder I so hated, and which seemed so to degrade me, left—I crept down a stone staircase with the aid of the banisters, to a narrow low passage, and found my way presently to the kitchen. It was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a generous fire. Hannah was baking. Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones. Hannah had been cold and stiff, indeed, at the first: latterly she had begun to relent a little; and when she saw me come in tidy and well-dressed, she even smiled. “What, you have got up!” she said. “You are better, then. You may sit you down in my chair on the hearthstone, if you will.” She pointed to the rocking-chair: I took it. She bustled about, examining me every now and then with the corner of her eye. Turning to me, as she took some loaves from the oven, she asked bluntly— “Did you ever go a-begging afore you came here?” I was indignant for a moment; but remembering that anger was out of the question, and that I had indeed appeared as a beggar to her, I answered quietly, but still not without a certain marked firmness— “You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar. I am no beggar; any more than yourself or your young ladies.” After a pause she said, “I dunnut understand that: you’ve like no house, nor no brass, I guess?” “The want of house or brass (by which I suppose you mean money) does not make a beggar in your sense of the word.” “Are you book-learned?” she inquired presently. “Yes, very.” “But you’ve never been to a boarding-school?” “I was at a boarding-school eight years.” She opened her eyes wide. “Whatever cannot ye keep yourself for, then?” “I have kept myself; and, I trust, shall keep myself again. What are you going to do with these gooseberries?” I inquired, as she brought out a basket of the fruit. “Mak’ ’em into pies.” “Give them to me and I’ll pick them.” “Nay; I dunnut want ye to do nought.” “But I must do something. Let me have them.” She consented; and she even brought me a clean towel to spread over my dress, “lest,” as she said, “I should mucky it.” “Ye’ve not been used to sarvant’s wark, I see by your hands,” she remarked. “Happen ye’ve been a dressmaker?” “No, you are wrong. And now, never mind what I have been: don’t trouble your head further about me; but tell me the name of the house where we are.” “Some calls it Marsh End, and some calls it Moor House.” “And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr. St. John?” “Nay; he doesn’t live here: he is only staying a while. When he is at home, he is in his own parish at Morton.” “That village a few miles off? “Aye.” “And what is he?” “He is a parson.” I remembered the answer of the old housekeeper at the parsonage, when I had asked to see the clergyman. “This, then, was his father’s residence?” “Aye; old Mr. Rivers lived here, and his father, and grandfather, and gurt (great) grandfather afore him.” “The name, then, of that gentleman, is Mr. St. John Rivers?” “Aye; St. John is like his kirstened name.” “And his sisters are called Diana and Mary Rivers?” “Yes.” “Their father is dead?” “Dead three weeks sin’ of a stroke.” “They have no mother?” “The mistress has been dead this mony a year.” “Have you lived with the family long?” “I’ve lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three.” “That proves you must have been an honest and faithful servant. I will say so much for you, though you have had the incivility to call me a beggar.” She again regarded me with a surprised stare. “I believe,” she said, “I was quite mista’en in my thoughts of you: but there is so mony cheats goes about, you mun forgie me.” “And though,” I continued, rather severely, “you wished to turn me from the door, on a night when you should not have shut out a dog.” “Well, it was hard: but what can a body do? I thought more o’ th’ childer nor of mysel: poor things! They’ve like nobody to tak’ care on ’em but me. I’m like to look sharpish.” I maintained a grave silence for some minutes. “You munnut think too hardly of me,” she again remarked. “But I do think hardly of you,” I said; “and I’ll tell you why—not so much because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an impostor, as because you just now made it a species of reproach that I had no ‘brass’ and no house. Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.” “No more I ought,” said she: “Mr. St. John tells me so too; and I see I wor wrang—but I’ve clear a different notion on you now to what I had. You look a raight down dacent little crater.” “That will do—I forgive you now. Shake hands.” She put her floury and horny hand into mine; another and heartier smile illumined her rough face, and from that moment we were friends. Hannah was evidently fond of talking. While I picked the fruit, and she made the paste for the pies, she proceeded to give me sundry details about her deceased master and mistress, and “the childer,” as she called the young people. Old Mr. Rivers, she said, was a plain man enough, but a gentleman, and of as ancient a family as could be found. Marsh End had belonged to the Rivers ever since it was a house: and it was, she affirmed, “aboon two hundred year old—for all it looked but a small, humble place, naught to compare wi’ Mr. Oliver’s grand hall down i’ Morton Vale. But she could remember Bill Oliver’s father a journeyman needlemaker; and th’ Rivers wor gentry i’ th’ owd days o’ th’ Henrys, as onybody might see by looking into th’ registers i’ Morton Church vestry.” Still, she allowed, “the owd maister was like other folk—naught mich out o’ t’ common way: stark mad o’ shooting, and farming, and sich like.” The mistress was different. She was a great reader, and studied a deal; and the “bairns” had taken after her. There was nothing like them in these parts, nor ever had been; they had liked learning, all three, almost from the time they could speak; and they had always been “of a mak’ of their own.” Mr. St. John, when he grew up, would go to college and be a parson; and the girls, as soon as they left school, would seek places as governesses: for they had told her their father had some years ago lost a great deal of money by a man he had trusted turning bankrupt; and as he was now not rich enough to give them fortunes, they must provide for themselves. They had lived very little at home for a long while, and were only come now to stay a few weeks on account of their father’s death; but they did so like Marsh End and Morton, and all these moors and hills about. They had been in London, and many other grand towns; but they always said there was no place like home; and then they were so agreeable with each other—never fell out nor “threaped.” She did not know where there was such a family for being united. Having finished my task of gooseberry picking, I asked where the two ladies and their brother were now. “Gone over to Morton for a walk; but they would be back in half-an-hour to tea.” They returned within the time Hannah had allotted them: they entered by the kitchen door. Mr. St. John, when he saw me, merely bowed and passed through; the two ladies stopped: Mary, in a few words, kindly and calmly expressed the pleasure she felt in seeing me well enough to be able to come down; Diana took my hand: she shook her head at me. “You should have waited for my leave to descend,” she said. “You still look very pale—and so thin! Poor child!—poor girl!” Diana had a voice toned, to my ear, like the cooing of a dove. She possessed eyes whose gaze I delighted to encounter. Her whole face seemed to me full of charm. Mary’s countenance was equally intelligent—her features equally pretty; but her expression was more reserved, and her manners, though gentle, more distant. Diana looked and spoke with a certain authority: she had a will, evidently. It was my nature to feel pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like hers, and to bend, where my conscience and self-respect permitted, to an active will. “And what business have you here?” she continued. “It is not your place. Mary and I sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home we like to be free, even to license—but you are a visitor, and must go into the parlour.” “I am very well here.” “Not at all, with Hannah bustling about and covering you with flour.” “Besides, the fire is too hot for you,” interposed Mary. “To be sure,” added her sister. “Come, you must be obedient.” And still holding my hand she made me rise, and led me into the inner room. “Sit there,” she said, placing me on the sofa, “while we take our things off and get the tea ready; it is another privilege we exercise in our little moorland home—to prepare our own meals when we are so inclined, or when Hannah is baking, brewing, washing, or ironing.” She closed the door, leaving me solus with Mr. St. John, who sat opposite, a book or newspaper in his hand. I examined, first, the parlour, and then its occupant. The parlour was rather a small room, very plainly furnished, yet comfortable, because clean and neat. The old-fashioned chairs were very bright, and the walnut-wood table was like a looking-glass. A few strange, antique portraits of the men and women of other days decorated the stained walls; a cupboard with glass doors contained some books and an ancient set of china. There was no superfluous ornament in the room—not one modern piece of furniture, save a brace of workboxes and a lady’s desk in rosewood, which stood on a side-table: everything—including the carpet and curtains—looked at once well worn and well saved. Mr. St. John—sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on the walls, keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips mutely sealed—was easy enough to examine. Had he been a statue instead of a man, he could not have been easier. He was young—perhaps from twenty-eight to thirty—tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in outline: quite a straight, classic nose; quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom, indeed, an English face comes so near the antique models as did his. He might well be a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious. His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead, colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of fair hair. This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom it describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding, an impressible, or even of a placid nature. Quiescent as he now sat, there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to my perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or eager. He did not speak to me one word, nor even direct to me one glance, till his sisters returned. Diana, as she passed in and out, in the course of preparing tea, brought me a little cake, baked on the top of the oven. “Eat that now,” she said: “you must be hungry. Hannah says you have had nothing but some gruel since breakfast.” I did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen. Mr. Rivers now closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took a seat, fixed his blue pictorial-looking eyes full on me. There was an unceremonious directness, a searching, decided steadfastness in his gaze now, which told that intention, and not diffidence, had hitherto kept it averted from the stranger. “You are very hungry,” he said. “I am, sir.” It is my way—it always was my way, by instinct—ever to meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness. “It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the last three days: there would have been danger in yielding to the cravings of your appetite at first. Now you may eat, though still not immoderately.” “I trust I shall not eat long at your expense, sir,” was my very clumsily-contrived, unpolished answer. “No,” he said coolly: “when you have indicated to us the residence of your friends, we can write to them, and you may be restored to home.” “That, I must plainly tell you, is out of my power to do; being absolutely without home and friends.” The three looked at me, but not distrustfully; I felt there was no suspicion in their glances: there was more of curiosity. I speak particularly of the young ladies. St. John’s eyes, though clear enough in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom. He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people’s thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to embarrass than to encourage. “Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that you are completely isolated from every connection?” “I do. Not a tie links me to any living thing: not a claim do I possess to admittance under any roof in England.” “A most singular position at your age!” Here I saw his glance directed to my hands, which were folded on the table before me. I wondered what he sought there: his words soon explained the quest. “You have never been married? You are a spinster?” Diana laughed. “Why, she can’t be above seventeen or eighteen years old, St. John,” said she. “I am near nineteen: but I am not married. No.” I felt a burning glow mount to my face; for bitter and agitating recollections were awakened by the allusion to marriage. They all saw the embarrassment and the emotion. Diana and Mary relieved me by turning their eyes elsewhere than to my crimsoned visage; but the colder and sterner brother continued to gaze, till the trouble he had excited forced out tears as well as colour. “Where did you last reside?” he now asked. “You are too inquisitive, St. John,” murmured Mary in a low voice; but he leaned over the table and required an answer by a second firm and piercing look. “The name of the place where, and of the person with whom I lived, is my secret,” I replied concisely. “Which, if you like, you have, in my opinion, a right to keep, both from St. John and every other questioner,” remarked Diana. “Yet if I know nothing about you or your history, I cannot help you,” he said. “And you need help, do you not?” “I need it, and I seek it so far, sir, that some true philanthropist will put me in the way of getting work which I can do, and the remuneration for which will keep me, if but in the barest necessaries of life.” “I know not whether I am a true philanthropist; yet I am willing to aid you to the utmost of my power in a purpose so honest. First, then, tell me what you have been accustomed to do, and what you _can_ do.” I had now swallowed my tea. I was mightily refreshed by the beverage; as much so as a giant with wine: it gave new tone to my unstrung nerves, and enabled me to address this penetrating young judge steadily. “Mr. Rivers,” I said, turning to him, and looking at him, as he looked at me, openly and without diffidence, “you and your sisters have done me a great service—the greatest man can do his fellow-being; you have rescued me, by your noble hospitality, from death. This benefit conferred gives you an unlimited claim on my gratitude, and a claim, to a certain extent, on my confidence. I will tell you as much of the history of the wanderer you have harboured, as I can tell without compromising my own peace of mind—my own security, moral and physical, and that of others. “I am an orphan, the daughter of a clergyman. My parents died before I could know them. I was brought up a dependent; educated in a charitable institution. I will even tell you the name of the establishment, where I passed six years as a pupil, and two as a teacher—Lowood Orphan Asylum, ——shire: you will have heard of it, Mr. Rivers?—the Rev. Robert Brocklehurst is the treasurer.” “I have heard of Mr. Brocklehurst, and I have seen the school.” “I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess. I obtained a good situation, and was happy. This place I was obliged to leave four days before I came here. The reason of my departure I cannot and ought not to explain: it would be useless, dangerous, and would sound incredible. No blame attached to me: I am as free from culpability as any one of you three. Miserable I am, and must be for a time; for the catastrophe which drove me from a house I had found a paradise was of a strange and direful nature. I observed but two points in planning my departure—speed, secrecy: to secure these, I had to leave behind me everything I possessed except a small parcel; which, in my hurry and trouble of mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me to Whitcross. To this neighbourhood, then, I came, quite destitute. I slept two nights in the open air, and wandered about two days without crossing a threshold: but twice in that space of time did I taste food; and it was when brought by hunger, exhaustion, and despair almost to the last gasp, that you, Mr. Rivers, forbade me to perish of want at your door, and took me under the shelter of your roof. I know all your sisters have done for me since—for I have not been insensible during my seeming torpor—and I owe to their spontaneous, genuine, genial compassion as large a debt as to your evangelical charity.” “Don’t make her talk any more now, St. John,” said Diana, as I paused; “she is evidently not yet fit for excitement. Come to the sofa and sit down now, Miss Elliott.” I gave an involuntary half start at hearing the _alias_: I had forgotten my new name. Mr. Rivers, whom nothing seemed to escape, noticed it at once. “You said your name was Jane Elliott?” he observed. “I did say so; and it is the name by which I think it expedient to be called at present, but it is not my real name, and when I hear it, it sounds strange to me.” “Your real name you will not give?” “No: I fear discovery above all things; and whatever disclosure would lead to it, I avoid.” “You are quite right, I am sure,” said Diana. “Now do, brother, let her be at peace a while.” But when St. John had mused a few moments he recommenced as imperturbably and with as much acumen as ever. “You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality—you would wish, I see, to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters’ compassion, and, above all, with my _charity_ (I am quite sensible of the distinction drawn, nor do I resent it—it is just): you desire to be independent of us?” “I do: I have already said so. Show me how to work, or how to seek work: that is all I now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the meanest cottage; but till then, allow me to stay here: I dread another essay of the horrors of homeless destitution.” “Indeed you _shall_ stay here,” said Diana, putting her white hand on my head. “You _shall_,” repeated Mary, in the tone of undemonstrative sincerity which seemed natural to her. “My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you,” said Mr. St. John, “as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a half-frozen bird some wintry wind might have driven through their casement. _I_ feel more inclination to put you in the way of keeping yourself, and shall endeavour to do so; but observe, my sphere is narrow. I am but the incumbent of a poor country parish: my aid must be of the humblest sort. And if you are inclined to despise the day of small things, seek some more efficient succour than such as I can offer.” “She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest she _can_ do,” answered Diana for me; “and you know, St. John, she has no choice of helpers: she is forced to put up with such crusty people as you.” “I will be a dressmaker; I will be a plain-workwoman; I will be a servant, a nurse-girl, if I can be no better,” I answered. “Right,” said Mr. St. John, quite coolly. “If such is your spirit, I promise to aid you, in my own time and way.” He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea. I soon withdrew, for I had talked as much, and sat up as long, as my present strength would permit. ', 'The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them. In a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day, and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all their occupations; converse with them as much as they wished, and aid them when and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time—the pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles. I liked to read what they liked to read: what they enjoyed, delighted me; what they approved, I reverenced. They loved their sequestered home. I, too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low roof, its latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged firs—all grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds; its garden, dark with yew and holly—and where no flowers but of the hardiest species would bloom—found a charm both potent and permanent. They clung to the purple moors behind and around their dwelling—to the hollow vale into which the pebbly bridle-path leading from their gate descended, and which wound between fern-banks first, and then amongst a few of the wildest little pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath, or gave sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep, with their little mossy-faced lambs:—they clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect enthusiasm of attachment. I could comprehend the feeling, and share both its strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality. I felt the consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline of swell and sweep—on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell by moss, by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken, and mellow granite crag. These details were just to me what they were to them—so many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast and the soft breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and sunset; the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for me, in these regions, the same attraction as for them—wound round my faculties the same spell that entranced theirs. Indoors we agreed equally well. They were both more accomplished and better read than I was; but with eagerness I followed in the path of knowledge they had trodden before me. I devoured the books they lent me: then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in the evening what I had perused during the day. Thought fitted thought; opinion met opinion: we coincided, in short, perfectly. If in our trio there was a superior and a leader, it was Diana. Physically, she far excelled me: she was handsome; she was vigorous. In her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty of flow, such as excited my wonder, while it baffled my comprehension. I could talk a while when the evening commenced, but the first gush of vivacity and fluency gone, I was fain to sit on a stool at Diana’s feet, to rest my head on her knee, and listen alternately to her and Mary, while they sounded thoroughly the topic on which I had but touched. Diana offered to teach me German. I liked to learn of her: I saw the part of instructress pleased and suited her; that of scholar pleased and suited me no less. Our natures dovetailed: mutual affection—of the strongest kind—was the result. They discovered I could draw: their pencils and colour-boxes were immediately at my service. My skill, greater in this one point than theirs, surprised and charmed them. Mary would sit and watch me by the hour together: then she would take lessons; and a docile, intelligent, assiduous pupil she made. Thus occupied, and mutually entertained, days passed like hours, and weeks like days. As to Mr. St John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and rapidly between me and his sisters did not extend to him. One reason of the distance yet observed between us was, that he was comparatively seldom at home: a large proportion of his time appeared devoted to visiting the sick and poor among the scattered population of his parish. No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions: rain or fair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over, take his hat, and, followed by his father’s old pointer, Carlo, go out on his mission of love or duty—I scarcely know in which light he regarded it. Sometimes, when the day was very unfavourable, his sisters would expostulate. He would then say, with a peculiar smile, more solemn than cheerful— “And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I propose to myself?” Diana and Mary’s general answer to this question was a sigh, and some minutes of apparently mournful meditation. But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to friendship with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even of a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labours, blameless in his life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity, that inward content, which should be the reward of every sincere Christian and practical philanthropist. Often, of an evening, when he sat at the window, his desk and papers before him, he would cease reading or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver himself up to I know not what course of thought; but that it was perturbed and exciting might be seen in the frequent flash and changeful dilation of his eye. I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight it was to his sisters. He expressed once, and but once in my hearing, a strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home; but there was more of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the sentiment was manifested; and never did he seem to roam the moors for the sake of their soothing silence—never seek out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful delights they could yield. Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an opportunity of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its calibre when I heard him preach in his own church at Morton. I wish I could describe that sermon: but it is past my power. I cannot even render faithfully the effect it produced on me. It began calm—and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went, it was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous language. This grew to force—compressed, condensed, controlled. The heart was thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher: neither were softened. Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic doctrines—election, predestination, reprobation—were frequent; and each reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom. When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed to me—I know not whether equally so to others—that the eloquence to which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of disappointment—where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers—pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was—had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all understanding: he had no more found it, I thought, than had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost elysium—regrets to which I have latterly avoided referring, but which possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly. Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor House, and return to the far different life and scene which awaited them, as governesses in a large, fashionable, south-of-England city, where each held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty members they were regarded only as humble dependents, and who neither knew nor sought out their innate excellences, and appreciated only their acquired accomplishments as they appreciated the skill of their cook or the taste of their waiting-woman. Mr. St. John had said nothing to me yet about the employment he had promised to obtain for me; yet it became urgent that I should have a vocation of some kind. One morning, being left alone with him a few minutes in the parlour, I ventured to approach the window-recess—which his table, chair, and desk consecrated as a kind of study—and I was going to speak, though not very well knowing in what words to frame my inquiry—for it is at all times difficult to break the ice of reserve glassing over such natures as his—when he saved me the trouble by being the first to commence a dialogue. Looking up as I drew near—“You have a question to ask of me?” he said. “Yes; I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can offer myself to undertake?” “I found or devised something for you three weeks ago; but as you seemed both useful and happy here—as my sisters had evidently become attached to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure—I deemed it inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till their approaching departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary.” “And they will go in three days now?” I said. “Yes; and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at Morton: Hannah will accompany me; and this old house will be shut up.” I waited a few moments, expecting he would go on with the subject first broached: but he seemed to have entered another train of reflection: his look denoted abstraction from me and my business. I was obliged to recall him to a theme which was of necessity one of close and anxious interest to me. “What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Rivers? I hope this delay will not have increased the difficulty of securing it.” “Oh, no; since it is an employment which depends only on me to give, and you to accept.” He again paused: there seemed a reluctance to continue. I grew impatient: a restless movement or two, and an eager and exacting glance fastened on his face, conveyed the feeling to him as effectually as words could have done, and with less trouble. “You need be in no hurry to hear,” he said: “let me frankly tell you, I have nothing eligible or profitable to suggest. Before I explain, recall, if you please, my notice, clearly given, that if I helped you, it must be as the blind man would help the lame. I am poor; for I find that, when I have paid my father’s debts, all the patrimony remaining to me will be this crumbling grange, the row of scathed firs behind, and the patch of moorish soil, with the yew-trees and holly-bushes in front. I am obscure: Rivers is an old name; but of the three sole descendants of the race, two earn the dependent’s crust among strangers, and the third considers himself an alien from his native country—not only for life, but in death. Yes, and deems, and is bound to deem, himself honoured by the lot, and aspires but after the day when the cross of separation from fleshly ties shall be laid on his shoulders, and when the Head of that church-militant of whose humblest members he is one, shall give the word, ‘Rise, follow Me!’” St. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with a quiet, deep voice; with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating radiance of glance. He resumed— “And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service of poverty and obscurity. _You_ may even think it degrading—for I see now your habits have been what the world calls refined: your tastes lean to the ideal, and your society has at least been amongst the educated; but _I_ consider that no service degrades which can better our race. I hold that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the Christian labourer’s task of tillage is appointed him—the scantier the meed his toil brings—the higher the honour. His, under such circumstances, is the destiny of the pioneer; and the first pioneers of the Gospel were the Apostles—their captain was Jesus, the Redeemer, Himself.” “Well?” I said, as he again paused—“proceed.” He looked at me before he proceeded: indeed, he seemed leisurely to read my face, as if its features and lines were characters on a page. The conclusions drawn from this scrutiny he partially expressed in his succeeding observations. “I believe you will accept the post I offer you,” said he, “and hold it for a while: not permanently, though: any more than I could permanently keep the narrow and narrowing—the tranquil, hidden office of English country incumbent; for in your nature is an alloy as detrimental to repose as that in mine, though of a different kind.” “Do explain,” I urged, when he halted once more. “I will; and you shall hear how poor the proposal is,—how trivial—how cramping. I shall not stay long at Morton, now that my father is dead, and that I am my own master. I shall leave the place probably in the course of a twelve-month; but while I do stay, I will exert myself to the utmost for its improvement. Morton, when I came to it two years ago, had no school: the children of the poor were excluded from every hope of progress. I established one for boys: I mean now to open a second school for girls. I have hired a building for the purpose, with a cottage of two rooms attached to it for the mistress’s house. Her salary will be thirty pounds a year: her house is already furnished, very simply, but sufficiently, by the kindness of a lady, Miss Oliver; the only daughter of the sole rich man in my parish—Mr. Oliver, the proprietor of a needle-factory and iron-foundry in the valley. The same lady pays for the education and clothing of an orphan from the workhouse, on condition that she shall aid the mistress in such menial offices connected with her own house and the school as her occupation of teaching will prevent her having time to discharge in person. Will you be this mistress?” He put the question rather hurriedly; he seemed half to expect an indignant, or at least a disdainful rejection of the offer: not knowing all my thoughts and feelings, though guessing some, he could not tell in what light the lot would appear to me. In truth it was humble—but then it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum: it was plodding—but then, compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was independent; and the fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul like iron: it was not ignoble—not unworthy—not mentally degrading, I made my decision. “I thank you for the proposal, Mr. Rivers, and I accept it with all my heart.” “But you comprehend me?” he said. “It is a village school: your scholars will be only poor girls—cottagers’ children—at the best, farmers’ daughters. Knitting, sewing, reading, writing, ciphering, will be all you will have to teach. What will you do with your accomplishments? What, with the largest portion of your mind—sentiments—tastes?” “Save them till they are wanted. They will keep.” “You know what you undertake, then?” “I do.” He now smiled: and not a bitter or a sad smile, but one well pleased and deeply gratified. “And when will you commence the exercise of your function?” “I will go to my house to-morrow, and open the school, if you like, next week.” “Very well: so be it.” He rose and walked through the room. Standing still, he again looked at me. He shook his head. “What do you disapprove of, Mr. Rivers?” I asked. “You will not stay at Morton long: no, no!” “Why? What is your reason for saying so?” “I read it in your eye; it is not of that description which promises the maintenance of an even tenor in life.” “I am not ambitious.” He started at the word “ambitious.” He repeated, “No. What made you think of ambition? Who is ambitious? I know I am: but how did you find it out?” “I was speaking of myself.” “Well, if you are not ambitious, you are—” He paused. “What?” “I was going to say, impassioned: but perhaps you would have misunderstood the word, and been displeased. I mean, that human affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you. I am sure you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, and to devote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly void of stimulus: any more than I can be content,” he added, with emphasis, “to live here buried in morass, pent in with mountains—my nature, that God gave me, contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed, paralysed—made useless. You hear now how I contradict myself. I, who preached contentment with a humble lot, and justified the vocation even of hewers of wood and drawers of water in God’s service—I, His ordained minister, almost rave in my restlessness. Well, propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.” He left the room. In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than in the whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me. Diana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day approached for leaving their brother and their home. They both tried to appear as usual; but the sorrow they had to struggle against was one that could not be entirely conquered or concealed. Diana intimated that this would be a different parting from any they had ever yet known. It would probably, as far as St. John was concerned, be a parting for years: it might be a parting for life. “He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves,” she said: “natural affection and feelings more potent still. St. John looks quiet, Jane; but he hides a fever in his vitals. You would think him gentle, yet in some things he is inexorable as death; and the worst of it is, my conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his severe decision: certainly, I cannot for a moment blame him for it. It is right, noble, Christian: yet it breaks my heart!” And the tears gushed to her fine eyes. Mary bent her head low over her work. “We are now without father: we shall soon be without home and brother,” she murmured. At that moment a little accident supervened, which seemed decreed by fate purposely to prove the truth of the adage, that “misfortunes never come singly,” and to add to their distresses the vexing one of the slip between the cup and the lip. St. John passed the window reading a letter. He entered. “Our uncle John is dead,” said he. Both the sisters seemed struck: not shocked or appalled; the tidings appeared in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting. “Dead?” repeated Diana. “Yes.” She riveted a searching gaze on her brother’s face. “And what then?” she demanded, in a low voice. “What then, Die?” he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of feature. “What then? Why—nothing. Read.” He threw the letter into her lap. She glanced over it, and handed it to Mary. Mary perused it in silence, and returned it to her brother. All three looked at each other, and all three smiled—a dreary, pensive smile enough. “Amen! We can yet live,” said Diana at last. “At any rate, it makes us no worse off than we were before,” remarked Mary. “Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what _might have been_,” said Mr. Rivers, “and contrasts it somewhat too vividly with what _is_.” He folded the letter, locked it in his desk, and again went out. For some minutes no one spoke. Diana then turned to me. “Jane, you will wonder at us and our mysteries,” she said, “and think us hard-hearted beings not to be more moved at the death of so near a relation as an uncle; but we have never seen him or known him. He was my mother’s brother. My father and he quarrelled long ago. It was by his advice that my father risked most of his property in the speculation that ruined him. Mutual recrimination passed between them: they parted in anger, and were never reconciled. My uncle engaged afterwards in more prosperous undertakings: it appears he realised a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. He was never married, and had no near kindred but ourselves and one other person, not more closely related than we. My father always cherished the idea that he would atone for his error by leaving his possessions to us; that letter informs us that he has bequeathed every penny to the other relation, with the exception of thirty guineas, to be divided between St. John, Diana, and Mary Rivers, for the purchase of three mourning rings. He had a right, of course, to do as he pleased: and yet a momentary damp is cast on the spirits by the receipt of such news. Mary and I would have esteemed ourselves rich with a thousand pounds each; and to St. John such a sum would have been valuable, for the good it would have enabled him to do.” This explanation given, the subject was dropped, and no further reference made to it by either Mr. Rivers or his sisters. The next day I left Marsh End for Morton. The day after, Diana and Mary quitted it for distant B——. In a week, Mr. Rivers and Hannah repaired to the parsonage: and so the old grange was abandoned. ', 'My home, then, when I at last find a home,—is a cottage; a little room with whitewashed walls and a sanded floor, containing four painted chairs and a table, a clock, a cupboard, with two or three plates and dishes, and a set of tea-things in delf. Above, a chamber of the same dimensions as the kitchen, with a deal bedstead and chest of drawers; small, yet too large to be filled with my scanty wardrobe: though the kindness of my gentle and generous friends has increased that, by a modest stock of such things as are necessary. It is evening. I have dismissed, with the fee of an orange, the little orphan who serves me as a handmaid. I am sitting alone on the hearth. This morning, the village school opened. I had twenty scholars. But three of the number can read: none write or cipher. Several knit, and a few sew a little. They speak with the broadest accent of the district. At present, they and I have a difficulty in understanding each other’s language. Some of them are unmannered, rough, intractable, as well as ignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to learn, and evince a disposition that pleases me. I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born. My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office. Much enjoyment I do not expect in the life opening before me: yet it will, doubtless, if I regulate my mind, and exert my powers as I ought, yield me enough to live on from day to day. Was I very gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed in yonder bare, humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon? Not to deceive myself, I must reply—No: I felt desolate to a degree. I felt—yes, idiot that I am—I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw round me. But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong—that is a great step gained; I shall strive to overcome them. To-morrow, I trust, I shall get the better of them partially; and in a few weeks, perhaps, they will be quite subdued. In a few months, it is possible, the happiness of seeing progress, and a change for the better in my scholars may substitute gratification for disgust. Meantime, let me ask myself one question—Which is better?—To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort—no struggle;—but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester’s mistress; delirious with his love half my time—for he would—oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He _did_ love me—no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace—for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me—it is what no man besides will ever be.—But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool’s paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss one hour—suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next—or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England? Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance! Having brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went to my door, and looked at the sunset of the harvest-day, and at the quiet fields before my cottage, which, with the school, was distant half a mile from the village. The birds were singing their last strains— “The air was mild, the dew was balm.” While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find myself ere long weeping—and why? For the doom which had reft me from adhesion to my master: for him I was no more to see; for the desperate grief and fatal fury—consequences of my departure—which might now, perhaps, be dragging him from the path of right, too far to leave hope of ultimate restoration thither. At this thought, I turned my face aside from the lovely sky of eve and lonely vale of Morton—I say _lonely_, for in that bend of it visible to me there was no building apparent save the church and the parsonage, half-hid in trees, and, quite at the extremity, the roof of Vale Hall, where the rich Mr. Oliver and his daughter lived. I hid my eyes, and leant my head against the stone frame of my door; but soon a slight noise near the wicket which shut in my tiny garden from the meadow beyond it made me look up. A dog—old Carlo, Mr. Rivers’ pointer, as I saw in a moment—was pushing the gate with his nose, and St. John himself leant upon it with folded arms; his brow knit, his gaze, grave almost to displeasure, fixed on me. I asked him to come in. “No, I cannot stay; I have only brought you a little parcel my sisters left for you. I think it contains a colour-box, pencils, and paper.” I approached to take it: a welcome gift it was. He examined my face, I thought, with austerity, as I came near: the traces of tears were doubtless very visible upon it. “Have you found your first day’s work harder than you expected?” he asked. “Oh, no! On the contrary, I think in time I shall get on with my scholars very well.” “But perhaps your accommodations—your cottage—your furniture—have disappointed your expectations? They are, in truth, scanty enough; but—” I interrupted— “My cottage is clean and weather-proof; my furniture sufficient and commodious. All I see has made me thankful, not despondent. I am not absolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the absence of a carpet, a sofa, and silver plate; besides, five weeks ago I had nothing—I was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant; now I have acquaintance, a home, a business. I wonder at the goodness of God; the generosity of my friends; the bounty of my lot. I do not repine.” “But you feel solitude an oppression? The little house there behind you is dark and empty.” “I have hardly had time yet to enjoy a sense of tranquillity, much less to grow impatient under one of loneliness.” “Very well; I hope you feel the content you express: at any rate, your good sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to the vacillating fears of Lot’s wife. What you had left before I saw you, of course I do not know; but I counsel you to resist firmly every temptation which would incline you to look back: pursue your present career steadily, for some months at least.” “It is what I mean to do,” I answered. St. John continued— “It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get—when our will strains after a path we may not follow—we need neither starve from inanition, nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden food it longed to taste—and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if rougher than it. “A year ago I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I had made a mistake in entering the ministry: its uniform duties wearied me to death. I burnt for the more active life of the world—for the more exciting toils of a literary career—for the destiny of an artist, author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes, the heart of a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown, a luster after power, beat under my curate’s surplice. I considered; my life was so wretched, it must be changed, or I must die. After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds—my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me; to bear which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator, were all needed: for these all centre in the good missionary. “A missionary I resolved to be. From that moment my state of mind changed; the fetters dissolved and dropped from every faculty, leaving nothing of bondage but its galling soreness—which time only can heal. My father, indeed, imposed the determination, but since his death, I have not a legitimate obstacle to contend with; some affairs settled, a successor for Morton provided, an entanglement or two of the feelings broken through or cut asunder—a last conflict with human weakness, in which I know I shall overcome, because I have vowed that I _will_ overcome—and I leave Europe for the East.” He said this, in his peculiar, subdued, yet emphatic voice; looking, when he had ceased speaking, not at me, but at the setting sun, at which I looked too. Both he and I had our backs towards the path leading up the field to the wicket. We had heard no step on that grass-grown track; the water running in the vale was the one lulling sound of the hour and scene; we might well then start when a gay voice, sweet as a silver bell, exclaimed— “Good evening, Mr. Rivers. And good evening, old Carlo. Your dog is quicker to recognise his friends than you are, sir; he pricked his ears and wagged his tail when I was at the bottom of the field, and you have your back towards me now.” It was true. Though Mr. Rivers had started at the first of those musical accents, as if a thunderbolt had split a cloud over his head, he stood yet, at the close of the sentence, in the same attitude in which the speaker had surprised him—his arm resting on the gate, his face directed towards the west. He turned at last, with measured deliberation. A vision, as it seemed to me, had risen at his side. There appeared, within three feet of him, a form clad in pure white—a youthful, graceful form: full, yet fine in contour; and when, after bending to caress Carlo, it lifted up its head, and threw back a long veil, there bloomed under his glance a face of perfect beauty. Perfect beauty is a strong expression; but I do not retrace or qualify it: as sweet features as ever the temperate clime of Albion moulded; as pure hues of rose and lily as ever her humid gales and vapoury skies generated and screened, justified, in this instance, the term. No charm was wanting, no defect was perceptible; the young girl had regular and delicate lineaments; eyes shaped and coloured as we see them in lovely pictures, large, and dark, and full; the long and shadowy eyelash which encircles a fine eye with so soft a fascination; the pencilled brow which gives such clearness; the white smooth forehead, which adds such repose to the livelier beauties of tint and ray; the cheek oval, fresh, and smooth; the lips, fresh too, ruddy, healthy, sweetly formed; the even and gleaming teeth without flaw; the small dimpled chin; the ornament of rich, plenteous tresses—all advantages, in short, which, combined, realise the ideal of beauty, were fully hers. I wondered, as I looked at this fair creature: I admired her with my whole heart. Nature had surely formed her in a partial mood; and, forgetting her usual stinted step-mother dole of gifts, had endowed this, her darling, with a grand-dame’s bounty. What did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel? I naturally asked myself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her; and, as naturally, I sought the answer to the inquiry in his countenance. He had already withdrawn his eye from the Peri, and was looking at a humble tuft of daisies which grew by the wicket. “A lovely evening, but late for you to be out alone,” he said, as he crushed the snowy heads of the closed flowers with his foot. “Oh, I only came home from S——” (she mentioned the name of a large town some twenty miles distant) “this afternoon. Papa told me you had opened your school, and that the new mistress was come; and so I put on my bonnet after tea, and ran up the valley to see her: this is she?” pointing to me. “It is,” said St. John. “Do you think you shall like Morton?” she asked of me, with a direct and naïve simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if child-like. “I hope I shall. I have many inducements to do so.” “Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected?” “Quite.” “Do you like your house?” “Very much.” “Have I furnished it nicely?” “Very nicely, indeed.” “And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood?” “You have indeed. She is teachable and handy.” (This then, I thought, is Miss Oliver, the heiress; favoured, it seems, in the gifts of fortune, as well as in those of nature! What happy combination of the planets presided over her birth, I wonder?) “I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes,” she added. “It will be a change for me to visit you now and then; and I like a change. Mr. Rivers, I have been _so_ gay during my stay at S——. Last night, or rather this morning, I was dancing till two o’clock. The ——th regiment are stationed there since the riots; and the officers are the most agreeable men in the world: they put all our young knife-grinders and scissor merchants to shame.” It seemed to me that Mr. St. John’s under lip protruded, and his upper lip curled a moment. His mouth certainly looked a good deal compressed, and the lower part of his face unusually stern and square, as the laughing girl gave him this information. He lifted his gaze, too, from the daisies, and turned it on her. An unsmiling, a searching, a meaning gaze it was. She answered it with a second laugh, and laughter well became her youth, her roses, her dimples, her bright eyes. As he stood, mute and grave, she again fell to caressing Carlo. “Poor Carlo loves me,” said she. “_He_ is not stern and distant to his friends; and if he could speak, he would not be silent.” As she patted the dog’s head, bending with native grace before his young and austere master, I saw a glow rise to that master’s face. I saw his solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless emotion. Flushed and kindled thus, he looked nearly as beautiful for a man as she for a woman. His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty. But he curbed it, I think, as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed. He responded neither by word nor movement to the gentle advances made him. “Papa says you never come to see us now,” continued Miss Oliver, looking up. “You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall. He is alone this evening, and not very well: will you return with me and visit him?” “It is not a seasonable hour to intrude on Mr. Oliver,” answered St. John. “Not a seasonable hour! But I declare it is. It is just the hour when papa most wants company: when the works are closed and he has no business to occupy him. Now, Mr. Rivers, _do_ come. Why are you so very shy, and so very sombre?” She filled up the hiatus his silence left by a reply of her own. “I forgot!” she exclaimed, shaking her beautiful curled head, as if shocked at herself. “I am so giddy and thoughtless! _Do_ excuse me. It had slipped my memory that you have good reasons to be indisposed for joining in my chatter. Diana and Mary have left you, and Moor House is shut up, and you are so lonely. I am sure I pity you. Do come and see papa.” “Not to-night, Miss Rosamond, not to-night.” Mr. St. John spoke almost like an automaton: himself only knew the effort it cost him thus to refuse. “Well, if you are so obstinate, I will leave you; for I dare not stay any longer: the dew begins to fall. Good evening!” She held out her hand. He just touched it. “Good evening!” he repeated, in a voice low and hollow as an echo. She turned, but in a moment returned. “Are you well?” she asked. Well might she put the question: his face was blanched as her gown. “Quite well,” he enunciated; and, with a bow, he left the gate. She went one way; he another. She turned twice to gaze after him as she tripped fairy-like down the field; he, as he strode firmly across, never turned at all. This spectacle of another’s suffering and sacrifice rapt my thoughts from exclusive meditation on my own. Diana Rivers had designated her brother “inexorable as death.” She had not exaggerated. ', 'I continued the labours of the village-school as actively and faithfully as I could. It was truly hard work at first. Some time elapsed before, with all my efforts, I could comprehend my scholars and their nature. Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid, they seemed to me hopelessly dull; and, at first sight, all dull alike: but I soon found I was mistaken. There was a difference amongst them as amongst the educated; and when I got to know them, and they me, this difference rapidly developed itself. Their amazement at me, my language, my rules, and ways, once subsided, I found some of these heavy-looking, gaping rustics wake up into sharp-witted girls enough. Many showed themselves obliging, and amiable too; and I discovered amongst them not a few examples of natural politeness, and innate self-respect, as well as of excellent capacity, that won both my goodwill and my admiration. These soon took a pleasure in doing their work well, in keeping their persons neat, in learning their tasks regularly, in acquiring quiet and orderly manners. The rapidity of their progress, in some instances, was even surprising; and an honest and happy pride I took in it: besides, I began personally to like some of the best girls; and they liked me. I had amongst my scholars several farmers’ daughters: young women grown, almost. These could already read, write, and sew; and to them I taught the elements of grammar, geography, history, and the finer kinds of needlework. I found estimable characters amongst them—characters desirous of information and disposed for improvement—with whom I passed many a pleasant evening hour in their own homes. Their parents then (the farmer and his wife) loaded me with attentions. There was an enjoyment in accepting their simple kindness, and in repaying it by a consideration—a scrupulous regard to their feelings—to which they were not, perhaps, at all times accustomed, and which both charmed and benefited them; because, while it elevated them in their own eyes, it made them emulous to merit the deferential treatment they received. I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went out, I heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with friendly smiles. To live amidst general regard, though it be but the regard of working people, is like “sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet;” serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray. At this period of my life, my heart far oftener swelled with thankfulness than sank with dejection: and yet, reader, to tell you all, in the midst of this calm, this useful existence—after a day passed in honourable exertion amongst my scholars, an evening spent in drawing or reading contentedly alone—I used to rush into strange dreams at night: dreams many-coloured, agitated, full of the ideal, the stirring, the stormy—dreams where, amidst unusual scenes, charged with adventure, with agitating risk and romantic chance, I still again and again met Mr. Rochester, always at some exciting crisis; and then the sense of being in his arms, hearing his voice, meeting his eye, touching his hand and cheek, loving him, being loved by him—the hope of passing a lifetime at his side, would be renewed, with all its first force and fire. Then I awoke. Then I recalled where I was, and how situated. Then I rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering; and then the still, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and heard the burst of passion. By nine o’clock the next morning I was punctually opening the school; tranquil, settled, prepared for the steady duties of the day. Rosamond Oliver kept her word in coming to visit me. Her call at the school was generally made in the course of her morning ride. She would canter up to the door on her pony, followed by a mounted livery servant. Anything more exquisite than her appearance, in her purple habit, with her Amazon’s cap of black velvet placed gracefully above the long curls that kissed her cheek and floated to her shoulders, can scarcely be imagined: and it was thus she would enter the rustic building, and glide through the dazzled ranks of the village children. She generally came at the hour when Mr. Rivers was engaged in giving his daily catechising lesson. Keenly, I fear, did the eye of the visitress pierce the young pastor’s heart. A sort of instinct seemed to warn him of her entrance, even when he did not see it; and when he was looking quite away from the door, if she appeared at it, his cheek would glow, and his marble-seeming features, though they refused to relax, changed indescribably, and in their very quiescence became expressive of a repressed fervour, stronger than working muscle or darting glance could indicate. Of course, she knew her power: indeed, he did not, because he could not, conceal it from her. In spite of his Christian stoicism, when she went up and addressed him, and smiled gaily, encouragingly, even fondly in his face, his hand would tremble and his eye burn. He seemed to say, with his sad and resolute look, if he did not say it with his lips, “I love you, and I know you prefer me. It is not despair of success that keeps me dumb. If I offered my heart, I believe you would accept it. But that heart is already laid on a sacred altar: the fire is arranged round it. It will soon be no more than a sacrifice consumed.” And then she would pout like a disappointed child; a pensive cloud would soften her radiant vivacity; she would withdraw her hand hastily from his, and turn in transient petulance from his aspect, at once so heroic and so martyr-like. St. John, no doubt, would have given the world to follow, recall, retain her, when she thus left him; but he would not give one chance of heaven, nor relinquish, for the elysium of her love, one hope of the true, eternal Paradise. Besides, he could not bind all that he had in his nature—the rover, the aspirant, the poet, the priest—in the limits of a single passion. He could not—he would not—renounce his wild field of mission warfare for the parlours and the peace of Vale Hall. I learnt so much from himself in an inroad I once, despite his reserve, had the daring to make on his confidence. Miss Oliver already honoured me with frequent visits to my cottage. I had learnt her whole character, which was without mystery or disguise: she was coquettish but not heartless; exacting, but not worthlessly selfish. She had been indulged from her birth, but was not absolutely spoilt. She was hasty, but good-humoured; vain (she could not help it, when every glance in the glass showed her such a flush of loveliness), but not affected; liberal-handed; innocent of the pride of wealth; ingenuous; sufficiently intelligent; gay, lively, and unthinking: she was very charming, in short, even to a cool observer of her own sex like me; but she was not profoundly interesting or thoroughly impressive. A very different sort of mind was hers from that, for instance, of the sisters of St. John. Still, I liked her almost as I liked my pupil Adèle; except that, for a child whom we have watched over and taught, a closer affection is engendered than we can give an equally attractive adult acquaintance. She had taken an amiable caprice to me. She said I was like Mr. Rivers, only, certainly, she allowed, “not one-tenth so handsome, though I was a nice neat little soul enough, but he was an angel.” I was, however, good, clever, composed, and firm, like him. I was a _lusus naturæ_, she affirmed, as a village schoolmistress: she was sure my previous history, if known, would make a delightful romance. One evening, while, with her usual child-like activity, and thoughtless yet not offensive inquisitiveness, she was rummaging the cupboard and the table-drawer of my little kitchen, she discovered first two French books, a volume of Schiller, a German grammar and dictionary, and then my drawing-materials and some sketches, including a pencil-head of a pretty little cherub-like girl, one of my scholars, and sundry views from nature, taken in the Vale of Morton and on the surrounding moors. She was first transfixed with surprise, and then electrified with delight. “Had I done these pictures? Did I know French and German? What a love—what a miracle I was! I drew better than her master in the first school in S——. Would I sketch a portrait of her, to show to papa?” “With pleasure,” I replied; and I felt a thrill of artist-delight at the idea of copying from so perfect and radiant a model. She had then on a dark-blue silk dress; her arms and her neck were bare; her only ornament was her chestnut tresses, which waved over her shoulders with all the wild grace of natural curls. I took a sheet of fine card-board, and drew a careful outline. I promised myself the pleasure of colouring it; and, as it was getting late then, I told her she must come and sit another day. She made such a report of me to her father, that Mr. Oliver himself accompanied her next evening—a tall, massive-featured, middle-aged, and grey-headed man, at whose side his lovely daughter looked like a bright flower near a hoary turret. He appeared a taciturn, and perhaps a proud personage; but he was very kind to me. The sketch of Rosamond’s portrait pleased him highly: he said I must make a finished picture of it. He insisted, too, on my coming the next day to spend the evening at Vale Hall. I went. I found it a large, handsome residence, showing abundant evidences of wealth in the proprietor. Rosamond was full of glee and pleasure all the time I stayed. Her father was affable; and when he entered into conversation with me after tea, he expressed in strong terms his approbation of what I had done in Morton school, and said he only feared, from what he saw and heard, I was too good for the place, and would soon quit it for one more suitable. “Indeed,” cried Rosamond, “she is clever enough to be a governess in a high family, papa.” I thought I would far rather be where I am than in any high family in the land. Mr. Oliver spoke of Mr. Rivers—of the Rivers family—with great respect. He said it was a very old name in that neighbourhood; that the ancestors of the house were wealthy; that all Morton had once belonged to them; that even now he considered the representative of that house might, if he liked, make an alliance with the best. He accounted it a pity that so fine and talented a young man should have formed the design of going out as a missionary; it was quite throwing a valuable life away. It appeared, then, that her father would throw no obstacle in the way of Rosamond’s union with St. John. Mr. Oliver evidently regarded the young clergyman’s good birth, old name, and sacred profession as sufficient compensation for the want of fortune. It was the 5th of November, and a holiday. My little servant, after helping me to clean my house, was gone, well satisfied with the fee of a penny for her aid. All about me was spotless and bright—scoured floor, polished grate, and well-rubbed chairs. I had also made myself neat, and had now the afternoon before me to spend as I would. The translation of a few pages of German occupied an hour; then I got my palette and pencils, and fell to the more soothing, because easier occupation, of completing Rosamond Oliver’s miniature. The head was finished already: there was but the background to tint and the drapery to shade off; a touch of carmine, too, to add to the ripe lips—a soft curl here and there to the tresses—a deeper tinge to the shadow of the lash under the azured eyelid. I was absorbed in the execution of these nice details, when, after one rapid tap, my door unclosed, admitting St. John Rivers. “I am come to see how you are spending your holiday,” he said. “Not, I hope, in thought? No, that is well: while you draw you will not feel lonely. You see, I mistrust you still, though you have borne up wonderfully so far. I have brought you a book for evening solace,” and he laid on the table a new publication—a poem: one of those genuine productions so often vouchsafed to the fortunate public of those days—the golden age of modern literature. Alas! the readers of our era are less favoured. But courage! I will not pause either to accuse or repine. I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon gained power over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty and strength again one day. Powerful angels, safe in heaven! they smile when sordid souls triumph, and feeble ones weep over their destruction. Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell—the hell of your own meanness. While I was eagerly glancing at the bright pages of “Marmion” (for “Marmion” it was), St. John stooped to examine my drawing. His tall figure sprang erect again with a start: he said nothing. I looked up at him: he shunned my eye. I knew his thoughts well, and could read his heart plainly; at the moment I felt calmer and cooler than he: I had then temporarily the advantage of him, and I conceived an inclination to do him some good, if I could. “With all his firmness and self-control,” thought I, “he tasks himself too far: locks every feeling and pang within—expresses, confesses, imparts nothing. I am sure it would benefit him to talk a little about this sweet Rosamond, whom he thinks he ought not to marry: I will make him talk.” I said first, “Take a chair, Mr. Rivers.” But he answered, as he always did, that he could not stay. “Very well,” I responded, mentally, “stand if you like; but you shall not go just yet, I am determined: solitude is at least as bad for you as it is for me. I’ll try if I cannot discover the secret spring of your confidence, and find an aperture in that marble breast through which I can shed one drop of the balm of sympathy.” “Is this portrait like?” I asked bluntly. “Like! Like whom? I did not observe it closely.” “You did, Mr. Rivers.” He almost started at my sudden and strange abruptness: he looked at me astonished. “Oh, that is nothing yet,” I muttered within. “I don’t mean to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part; I’m prepared to go to considerable lengths.” I continued, “You observed it closely and distinctly; but I have no objection to your looking at it again,” and I rose and placed it in his hand. “A well-executed picture,” he said; “very soft, clear colouring; very graceful and correct drawing.” “Yes, yes; I know all that. But what of the resemblance? Who is it like?” Mastering some hesitation, he answered, “Miss Oliver, I presume.” “Of course. And now, sir, to reward you for the accurate guess, I will promise to paint you a careful and faithful duplicate of this very picture, provided you admit that the gift would be acceptable to you. I don’t wish to throw away my time and trouble on an offering you would deem worthless.” He continued to gaze at the picture: the longer he looked, the firmer he held it, the more he seemed to covet it. “It is like!” he murmured; “the eye is well managed: the colour, light, expression, are perfect. It smiles!” “Would it comfort, or would it wound you to have a similar painting? Tell me that. When you are at Madagascar, or at the Cape, or in India, would it be a consolation to have that memento in your possession? or would the sight of it bring recollections calculated to enervate and distress?” He now furtively raised his eyes: he glanced at me, irresolute, disturbed: he again surveyed the picture. “That I should like to have it is certain: whether it would be judicious or wise is another question.” Since I had ascertained that Rosamond really preferred him, and that her father was not likely to oppose the match, I—less exalted in my views than St. John—had been strongly disposed in my own heart to advocate their union. It seemed to me that, should he become the possessor of Mr. Oliver’s large fortune, he might do as much good with it as if he went and laid his genius out to wither, and his strength to waste, under a tropical sun. With this persuasion I now answered— “As far as I can see, it would be wiser and more judicious if you were to take to yourself the original at once.” By this time he had sat down: he had laid the picture on the table before him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung fondly over it. I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity. I saw even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he had deemed unapproachable—to hear it thus freely handled—was beginning to be felt by him as a new pleasure—an unhoped-for relief. Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to “burst” with boldness and good-will into “the silent sea” of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations. “She likes you, I am sure,” said I, as I stood behind his chair, “and her father respects you. Moreover, she is a sweet girl—rather thoughtless; but you would have sufficient thought for both yourself and her. You ought to marry her.” “_Does_ she like me?” he asked. “Certainly; better than she likes any one else. She talks of you continually: there is no subject she enjoys so much or touches upon so often.” “It is very pleasant to hear this,” he said—“very: go on for another quarter of an hour.” And he actually took out his watch and laid it upon the table to measure the time. “But where is the use of going on,” I asked, “when you are probably preparing some iron blow of contradiction, or forging a fresh chain to fetter your heart?” “Don’t imagine such hard things. Fancy me yielding and melting, as I am doing: human love rising like a freshly opened fountain in my mind and overflowing with sweet inundation all the field I have so carefully and with such labour prepared—so assiduously sown with the seeds of good intentions, of self-denying plans. And now it is deluged with a nectarous flood—the young germs swamped—delicious poison cankering them: now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in the drawing-room at Vale Hall at my bride Rosamond Oliver’s feet: she is talking to me with her sweet voice—gazing down on me with those eyes your skilful hand has copied so well—smiling at me with these coral lips. She is mine—I am hers—this present life and passing world suffice to me. Hush! say nothing—my heart is full of delight—my senses are entranced—let the time I marked pass in peace.” I humoured him: the watch ticked on: he breathed fast and low: I stood silent. Amidst this hush the quartet sped; he replaced the watch, laid the picture down, rose, and stood on the hearth. “Now,” said he, “that little space was given to delirium and delusion. I rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put my neck voluntarily under her yoke of flowers; I tasted her cup. The pillow was burning: there is an asp in the garland: the wine has a bitter taste: her promises are hollow—her offers false: I see and know all this.” I gazed at him in wonder. “It is strange,” pursued he, “that while I love Rosamond Oliver so wildly—with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating—I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months’ rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know.” “Strange indeed!” I could not help ejaculating. “While something in me,” he went on, “is acutely sensible to her charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects: they are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to—co-operate in nothing I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle? Rosamond a missionary’s wife? No!” “But you need not be a missionary. You might relinquish that scheme.” “Relinquish! What! my vocation? My great work? My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their race—of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance—of substituting peace for war—freedom for bondage—religion for superstition—the hope of heaven for the fear of hell? Must I relinquish that? It is dearer than the blood in my veins. It is what I have to look forward to, and to live for.” After a considerable pause, I said—“And Miss Oliver? Are her disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?” “Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers: in less than a month, my image will be effaced from her heart. She will forget me; and will marry, probably, some one who will make her far happier than I should do.” “You speak coolly enough; but you suffer in the conflict. You are wasting away.” “No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet unsettled—my departure, continually procrastinated. Only this morning, I received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I have been so long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three months to come yet; and perhaps the three months may extend to six.” “You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the schoolroom.” Again the surprised expression crossed his face. He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart’s very hearthstone. “You _are_ original,” said he, “and not timid. There is something brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me to assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions. You think them more profound and potent than they are. You give me a larger allowance of sympathy than I have a just claim to. When I colour, and when I shake before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself. I scorn the weakness. I know it is ignoble: a mere fever of the flesh: not, I declare, the convulsion of the soul. _That_ is just as fixed as a rock, firm set in the depths of a restless sea. Know me to be what I am—a cold hard man.” I smiled incredulously. “You have taken my confidence by storm,” he continued, “and now it is much at your service. I am simply, in my original state—stripped of that blood-bleached robe with which Christianity covers human deformity—a cold, hard, ambitious man. Natural affection only, of all the sentiments, has permanent power over me. Reason, and not feeling, is my guide; my ambition is unlimited: my desire to rise higher, to do more than others, insatiable. I honour endurance, perseverance, industry, talent; because these are the means by which men achieve great ends and mount to lofty eminence. I watch your career with interest, because I consider you a specimen of a diligent, orderly, energetic woman: not because I deeply compassionate what you have gone through, or what you still suffer.” “You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher,” I said. “No. There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers: I believe; and I believe the Gospel. You missed your epithet. I am not a pagan, but a Christian philosopher—a follower of the sect of Jesus. As His disciple I adopt His pure, His merciful, His benignant doctrines. I advocate them: I am sworn to spread them. Won in youth to religion, she has cultivated my original qualities thus:—From the minute germ, natural affection, she has developed the overshadowing tree, philanthropy. From the wild stringy root of human uprightness, she has reared a due sense of the Divine justice. Of the ambition to win power and renown for my wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread my Master’s kingdom; to achieve victories for the standard of the cross. So much has religion done for me; turning the original materials to the best account; pruning and training nature. But she could not eradicate nature: nor will it be eradicated ‘till this mortal shall put on immortality.’” Having said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside my palette. Once more he looked at the portrait. “She _is_ lovely,” he murmured. “She is well named the Rose of the World, indeed!” “And may I not paint one like it for you?” “_Cui bono_? No.” He drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was accustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the cardboard from being sullied. What he suddenly saw on this blank paper, it was impossible for me to tell; but something had caught his eye. He took it up with a snatch; he looked at the edge; then shot a glance at me, inexpressibly peculiar, and quite incomprehensible: a glance that seemed to take and make note of every point in my shape, face, and dress; for it traversed all, quick, keen as lightning. His lips parted, as if to speak: but he checked the coming sentence, whatever it was. “What is the matter?” I asked. “Nothing in the world,” was the reply; and, replacing the paper, I saw him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin. It disappeared in his glove; and, with one hasty nod and “good-afternoon,” he vanished. “Well!” I exclaimed, using an expression of the district, “that caps the globe, however!” I, in my turn, scrutinised the paper; but saw nothing on it save a few dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil. I pondered the mystery a minute or two; but finding it insolvable, and being certain it could not be of much moment, I dismissed, and soon forgot it. ', 'When Mr. St. John went, it was beginning to snow; the whirling storm continued all night. The next day a keen wind brought fresh and blinding falls; by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost impassable. I had closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to prevent the snow from blowing in under it, trimmed my fire, and after sitting nearly an hour on the hearth listening to the muffled fury of the tempest, I lit a candle, took down “Marmion,” and beginning— “Day set on Norham’s castled steep, And Tweed’s fair river broad and deep,     And Cheviot’s mountains lone; The massive towers, the donjon keep, The flanking walls that round them sweep,     In yellow lustre shone”— I soon forgot storm in music. I heard a noise: the wind, I thought, shook the door. No; it was St. John Rivers, who, lifting the latch, came in out of the frozen hurricane—the howling darkness—and stood before me: the cloak that covered his tall figure all white as a glacier. I was almost in consternation, so little had I expected any guest from the blocked-up vale that night. “Any ill news?” I demanded. “Has anything happened?” “No. How very easily alarmed you are!” he answered, removing his cloak and hanging it up against the door, towards which he again coolly pushed the mat which his entrance had deranged. He stamped the snow from his boots. “I shall sully the purity of your floor,” said he, “but you must excuse me for once.” Then he approached the fire. “I have had hard work to get here, I assure you,” he observed, as he warmed his hands over the flame. “One drift took me up to the waist; happily the snow is quite soft yet.” “But why are you come?” I could not forbear saying. “Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor; but since you ask it, I answer simply to have a little talk with you; I got tired of my mute books and empty rooms. Besides, since yesterday I have experienced the excitement of a person to whom a tale has been half-told, and who is impatient to hear the sequel.” He sat down. I recalled his singular conduct of yesterday, and really I began to fear his wits were touched. If he were insane, however, his was a very cool and collected insanity: I had never seen that handsome-featured face of his look more like chiselled marble than it did just now, as he put aside his snow-wet hair from his forehead and let the firelight shine free on his pale brow and cheek as pale, where it grieved me to discover the hollow trace of care or sorrow now so plainly graved. I waited, expecting he would say something I could at least comprehend; but his hand was now at his chin, his finger on his lip: he was thinking. It struck me that his hand looked wasted like his face. A perhaps uncalled-for gush of pity came over my heart: I was moved to say— “I wish Diana or Mary would come and live with you: it is too bad that you should be quite alone; and you are recklessly rash about your own health.” “Not at all,” said he: “I care for myself when necessary. I am well now. What do you see amiss in me?” This was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which showed that my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly superfluous. I was silenced. He still slowly moved his finger over his upper lip, and still his eye dwelt dreamily on the glowing grate; thinking it urgent to say something, I asked him presently if he felt any cold draught from the door, which was behind him. “No, no!” he responded shortly and somewhat testily. “Well,” I reflected, “if you won’t talk, you may be still; I’ll let you alone now, and return to my book.” So I snuffed the candle and resumed the perusal of “Marmion.” He soon stirred; my eye was instantly drawn to his movements; he only took out a morocco pocket-book, thence produced a letter, which he read in silence, folded it, put it back, relapsed into meditation. It was vain to try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before me; nor could I, in impatience, consent to be dumb; he might rebuff me if he liked, but talk I would. “Have you heard from Diana and Mary lately?” “Not since the letter I showed you a week ago.” “There has not been any change made about your own arrangements? You will not be summoned to leave England sooner than you expected?” “I fear not, indeed: such chance is too good to befall me.” Baffled so far, I changed my ground. I bethought myself to talk about the school and my scholars. “Mary Garrett’s mother is better, and Mary came back to the school this morning, and I shall have four new girls next week from the Foundry Close—they would have come to-day but for the snow.” “Indeed!” “Mr. Oliver pays for two.” “Does he?” “He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas.” “I know.” “Was it your suggestion?” “No.” “Whose, then?” “His daughter’s, I think.” “It is like her: she is so good-natured.” “Yes.” Again came the blank of a pause: the clock struck eight strokes. It aroused him; he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me. “Leave your book a moment, and come a little nearer the fire,” he said. Wondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied. “Half-an-hour ago,” he pursued, “I spoke of my impatience to hear the sequel of a tale: on reflection, I find the matter will be better managed by my assuming the narrator’s part, and converting you into a listener. Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you that the story will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears; but stale details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass through new lips. For the rest, whether trite or novel, it is short. “Twenty years ago, a poor curate—never mind his name at this moment—fell in love with a rich man’s daughter; she fell in love with him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in ——shire.) They left a daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap—cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night. Charity carried the friendless thing to the house of its rich maternal relations; it was reared by an aunt-in-law, called (I come to names now) Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. You start—did you hear a noise? I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the rafters of the adjoining schoolroom: it was a barn before I had it repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted by rats.—To proceed. Mrs. Reed kept the orphan ten years: whether it was happy or not with her, I cannot say, never having been told; but at the end of that time she transferred it to a place you know—being no other than Lowood School, where you so long resided yourself. It seems her career there was very honourable: from a pupil, she became a teacher, like yourself—really it strikes me there are parallel points in her history and yours—she left it to be a governess: there, again, your fates were analogous; she undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr. Rochester.” “Mr. Rivers!” I interrupted. “I can guess your feelings,” he said, “but restrain them for a while: I have nearly finished; hear me to the end. Of Mr. Rochester’s character I know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable marriage to this young girl, and that at the very altar she discovered he had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic. What his subsequent conduct and proposals were is a matter of pure conjecture; but when an event transpired which rendered inquiry after the governess necessary, it was discovered she was gone—no one could tell when, where, or how. She had left Thornfield Hall in the night; every research after her course had been vain: the country had been scoured far and wide; no vestige of information could be gathered respecting her. Yet that she should be found is become a matter of serious urgency: advertisements have been put in all the papers; I myself have received a letter from one Mr. Briggs, a solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted. Is it not an odd tale?” “Just tell me this,” said I, “and since you know so much, you surely _can_ tell it me—what of Mr. Rochester? How and where is he? What is he doing? Is he well?” “I am ignorant of all concerning Mr. Rochester: the letter never mentions him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I have adverted to. You should rather ask the name of the governess—the nature of the event which requires her appearance.” “Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then? Did no one see Mr. Rochester?” “I suppose not.” “But they wrote to him?” “Of course.” “And what did he say? Who has his letters?” “Mr. Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not from Mr. Rochester, but from a lady: it is signed ‘Alice Fairfax.’” I felt cold and dismayed: my worst fears then were probably true: he had in all probability left England and rushed in reckless desperation to some former haunt on the Continent. And what opiate for his severe sufferings—what object for his strong passions—had he sought there? I dared not answer the question. Oh, my poor master—once almost my husband—whom I had often called “my dear Edward!” “He must have been a bad man,” observed Mr. Rivers. “You don’t know him—don’t pronounce an opinion upon him,” I said, with warmth. “Very well,” he answered quietly: “and indeed my head is otherwise occupied than with him: I have my tale to finish. Since you won’t ask the governess’s name, I must tell it of my own accord. Stay! I have it here—it is always more satisfactory to see important points written down, fairly committed to black and white.” And the pocket-book was again deliberately produced, opened, sought through; from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip of paper, hastily torn off: I recognised in its texture and its stains of ultra-marine, and lake, and vermillion, the ravished margin of the portrait-cover. He got up, held it close to my eyes: and I read, traced in Indian ink, in my own handwriting, the words “JANE EYRE”—the work doubtless of some moment of abstraction. “Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre:” he said, “the advertisements demanded a Jane Eyre: I knew a Jane Elliott.—I confess I had my suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once resolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the _alias_?” “Yes—yes; but where is Mr. Briggs? He perhaps knows more of Mr. Rochester than you do.” “Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all about Mr. Rochester; it is not in Mr. Rochester he is interested. Meantime, you forget essential points in pursuing trifles: you do not inquire why Mr. Briggs sought after you—what he wanted with you.” “Well, what did he want?” “Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead; that he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich—merely that—nothing more.” “I!—rich?” “Yes, you, rich—quite an heiress.” Silence succeeded. “You must prove your identity of course,” resumed St. John presently: “a step which will offer no difficulties; you can then enter on immediate possession. Your fortune is vested in the English funds; Briggs has the will and the necessary documents.” Here was a new card turned up! It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted in a moment from indigence to wealth—a very fine thing; but not a matter one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once. And then there are other chances in life far more thrilling and rapture-giving: _this_ is solid, an affair of the actual world, nothing ideal about it: all its associations are solid and sober, and its manifestations are the same. One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow. Besides, the words Legacy, Bequest, go side by side with the words, Death, Funeral. My uncle I had heard was dead—my only relative; ever since being made aware of his existence, I had cherished the hope of one day seeing him: now, I never should. And then this money came only to me: not to me and a rejoicing family, but to my isolated self. It was a grand boon doubtless; and independence would be glorious—yes, I felt that—_that_ thought swelled my heart. “You unbend your forehead at last,” said Mr. Rivers. “I thought Medusa had looked at you, and that you were turning to stone. Perhaps now you will ask how much you are worth?” “How much am I worth?” “Oh, a trifle! Nothing of course to speak of—twenty thousand pounds, I think they say—but what is that?” “Twenty thousand pounds?” Here was a new stunner—I had been calculating on four or five thousand. This news actually took my breath for a moment: Mr. St. John, whom I had never heard laugh before, laughed now. “Well,” said he, “if you had committed a murder, and I had told you your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast.” “It is a large sum—don’t you think there is a mistake?” “No mistake at all.” “Perhaps you have read the figures wrong—it may be two thousand!” “It is written in letters, not figures,—twenty thousand.” I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on. “If it were not such a very wild night,” he said, “I would send Hannah down to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable to be left alone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the drifts so well as I: her legs are not quite so long: so I must e’en leave you to your sorrows. Good-night.” He was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me. “Stop one minute!” I cried. “Well?” “It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me; or how he knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-way place, had the power to aid in my discovery.” “Oh! I am a clergyman,” he said; “and the clergy are often appealed to about odd matters.” Again the latch rattled. “No; that does not satisfy me!” I exclaimed: and indeed there was something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever. “It is a very strange piece of business,” I added; “I must know more about it.” “Another time.” “No; to-night!—to-night!” and as he turned from the door, I placed myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed. “You certainly shall not go till you have told me all,” I said. “I would rather not just now.” “You shall!—you must!” “I would rather Diana or Mary informed you.” Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax: gratified it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so. “But I apprised you that I was a hard man,” said he, “difficult to persuade.” “And I am a hard woman,—impossible to put off.” And I am a hard woman,—impossible to put off “And then,” he pursued, “I am cold: no fervour infects me.” “Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has thawed all the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has streamed on to my floor, and made it like a trampled street. As you hope ever to be forgiven, Mr. Rivers, the high crime and misdemeanour of spoiling a sanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to know.” “Well, then,” he said, “I yield; if not to your earnestness, to your perseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping. Besides, you must know some day,—as well now as later. Your name is Jane Eyre?” “Of course: that was all settled before.” “You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake?—that I was christened St. John Eyre Rivers?” “No, indeed! I remember now seeing the letter E. comprised in your initials written in books you have at different times lent me; but I never asked for what name it stood. But what then? Surely—” I stopped: I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to express, the thought that rushed upon me—that embodied itself,—that, in a second, stood out a strong, solid probability. Circumstances knit themselves, fitted themselves, shot into order: the chain that had been lying hitherto a formless lump of links was drawn out straight,—every ring was perfect, the connection complete. I knew, by instinct, how the matter stood, before St. John had said another word; but I cannot expect the reader to have the same intuitive perception, so I must repeat his explanation. “My mother’s name was Eyre; she had two brothers; one a clergyman, who married Miss Jane Reed, of Gateshead; the other, John Eyre, Esq., merchant, late of Funchal, Madeira. Mr. Briggs, being Mr. Eyre’s solicitor, wrote to us last August to inform us of our uncle’s death, and to say that he had left his property to his brother the clergyman’s orphan daughter, overlooking us, in consequence of a quarrel, never forgiven, between him and my father. He wrote again a few weeks since, to intimate that the heiress was lost, and asking if we knew anything of her. A name casually written on a slip of paper has enabled me to find her out. You know the rest.” Again he was going, but I set my back against the door. “Do let me speak,” I said; “let me have one moment to draw breath and reflect.” I paused—he stood before me, hat in hand, looking composed enough. I resumed— “Your mother was my father’s sister?” “Yes.” “My aunt, consequently?” He bowed. “My uncle John was your uncle John? You, Diana, and Mary are his sister’s children, as I am his brother’s child?” “Undeniably.” “You three, then, are my cousins; half our blood on each side flows from the same source?” “We are cousins; yes.” I surveyed him. It seemed I had found a brother: one I could be proud of,—one I could love; and two sisters, whose qualities were such, that, when I knew them but as mere strangers, they had inspired me with genuine affection and admiration. The two girls, on whom, kneeling down on the wet ground, and looking through the low, latticed window of Moor House kitchen, I had gazed with so bitter a mixture of interest and despair, were my near kinswomen; and the young and stately gentleman who had found me almost dying at his threshold was my blood relation. Glorious discovery to a lonely wretch! This was wealth indeed!—wealth to the heart!—a mine of pure, genial affections. This was a blessing, bright, vivid, and exhilarating;—not like the ponderous gift of gold: rich and welcome enough in its way, but sobering from its weight. I now clapped my hands in sudden joy—my pulse bounded, my veins thrilled. “Oh, I am glad!—I am glad!” I exclaimed. St. John smiled. “Did I not say you neglected essential points to pursue trifles?” he asked. “You were serious when I told you you had got a fortune; and now, for a matter of no moment, you are excited.” “What _can_ you mean? It may be of no moment to you; you have sisters and don’t care for a cousin; but I had nobody; and now three relations,—or two, if you don’t choose to be counted,—are born into my world full-grown. I say again, I am glad!” I walked fast through the room: I stopped, half suffocated with the thoughts that rose faster than I could receive, comprehend, settle them:—thoughts of what might, could, would, and should be, and that ere long. I looked at the blank wall: it seemed a sky thick with ascending stars,—every one lit me to a purpose or delight. Those who had saved my life, whom, till this hour, I had loved barrenly, I could now benefit. They were under a yoke,—I could free them: they were scattered,—I could reunite them: the independence, the affluence which was mine, might be theirs too. Were we not four? Twenty thousand pounds shared equally would be five thousand each, justice—enough and to spare: justice would be done,—mutual happiness secured. Now the wealth did not weigh on me: now it was not a mere bequest of coin,—it was a legacy of life, hope, enjoyment. How I looked while these ideas were taking my spirit by storm, I cannot tell; but I perceived soon that Mr. Rivers had placed a chair behind me, and was gently attempting to make me sit down on it. He also advised me to be composed; I scorned the insinuation of helplessness and distraction, shook off his hand, and began to walk about again. “Write to Diana and Mary to-morrow,” I said, “and tell them to come home directly. Diana said they would both consider themselves rich with a thousand pounds, so with five thousand they will do very well.” “Tell me where I can get you a glass of water,” said St. John; “you must really make an effort to tranquillise your feelings.” “Nonsense! and what sort of an effect will the bequest have on you? Will it keep you in England, induce you to marry Miss Oliver, and settle down like an ordinary mortal?” “You wander: your head becomes confused. I have been too abrupt in communicating the news; it has excited you beyond your strength.” “Mr. Rivers! you quite put me out of patience: I am rational enough; it is you who misunderstand, or rather who affect to misunderstand.” “Perhaps, if you explained yourself a little more fully, I should comprehend better.” “Explain! What is there to explain? You cannot fail to see that twenty thousand pounds, the sum in question, divided equally between the nephew and three nieces of our uncle, will give five thousand to each? What I want is, that you should write to your sisters and tell them of the fortune that has accrued to them.” “To you, you mean.” “I have intimated my view of the case: I am incapable of taking any other. I am not brutally selfish, blindly unjust, or fiendishly ungrateful. Besides, I am resolved I will have a home and connections. I like Moor House, and I will live at Moor House; I like Diana and Mary, and I will attach myself for life to Diana and Mary. It would please and benefit me to have five thousand pounds; it would torment and oppress me to have twenty thousand; which, moreover, could never be mine in justice, though it might in law. I abandon to you, then, what is absolutely superfluous to me. Let there be no opposition, and no discussion about it; let us agree amongst each other, and decide the point at once.” “This is acting on first impulses; you must take days to consider such a matter, ere your word can be regarded as valid.” “Oh! if all you doubt is my sincerity, I am easy: you see the justice of the case?” “I _do_ see a certain justice; but it is contrary to all custom. Besides, the entire fortune is your right: my uncle gained it by his own efforts; he was free to leave it to whom he would: he left it to you. After all, justice permits you to keep it: you may, with a clear conscience, consider it absolutely your own.” “With me,” said I, “it is fully as much a matter of feeling as of conscience: I must indulge my feelings; I so seldom have had an opportunity of doing so. Were you to argue, object, and annoy me for a year, I could not forego the delicious pleasure of which I have caught a glimpse—that of repaying, in part, a mighty obligation, and winning to myself lifelong friends.” “You think so now,” rejoined St. John, “because you do not know what it is to possess, nor consequently to enjoy wealth: you cannot form a notion of the importance twenty thousand pounds would give you; of the place it would enable you to take in society; of the prospects it would open to you: you cannot—” “And you,” I interrupted, “cannot at all imagine the craving I have for fraternal and sisterly love. I never had a home, I never had brothers or sisters; I must and will have them now: you are not reluctant to admit me and own me, are you?” “Jane, I will be your brother—my sisters will be your sisters—without stipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights.” “Brother? Yes; at the distance of a thousand leagues! Sisters? Yes; slaving amongst strangers! I, wealthy—gorged with gold I never earned and do not merit! You, penniless! Famous equality and fraternisation! Close union! Intimate attachment!” “But, Jane, your aspirations after family ties and domestic happiness may be realised otherwise than by the means you contemplate: you may marry.” “Nonsense, again! Marry! I don’t want to marry, and never shall marry.” “That is saying too much: such hazardous affirmations are a proof of the excitement under which you labour.” “It is not saying too much: I know what I feel, and how averse are my inclinations to the bare thought of marriage. No one would take me for love; and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere money speculation. And I do not want a stranger—unsympathising, alien, different from me; I want my kindred: those with whom I have full fellow-feeling. Say again you will be my brother: when you uttered the words I was satisfied, happy; repeat them, if you can, repeat them sincerely.” “I think I can. I know I have always loved my own sisters; and I know on what my affection for them is grounded,—respect for their worth and admiration of their talents. You too have principle and mind: your tastes and habits resemble Diana’s and Mary’s; your presence is always agreeable to me; in your conversation I have already for some time found a salutary solace. I feel I can easily and naturally make room in my heart for you, as my third and youngest sister.” “Thank you: that contents me for to-night. Now you had better go; for if you stay longer, you will perhaps irritate me afresh by some mistrustful scruple.” “And the school, Miss Eyre? It must now be shut up, I suppose?” “No. I will retain my post of mistress till you get a substitute.” He smiled approbation: we shook hands, and he took leave. I need not narrate in detail the further struggles I had, and arguments I used, to get matters regarding the legacy settled as I wished. My task was a very hard one; but, as I was absolutely resolved—as my cousins saw at length that my mind was really and immutably fixed on making a just division of the property—as they must in their own hearts have felt the equity of the intention; and must, besides, have been innately conscious that in my place they would have done precisely what I wished to do—they yielded at length so far as to consent to put the affair to arbitration. The judges chosen were Mr. Oliver and an able lawyer: both coincided in my opinion: I carried my point. The instruments of transfer were drawn out: St. John, Diana, Mary, and I, each became possessed of a competency. ', 'It was near Christmas by the time all was settled: the season of general holiday approached. I now closed Morton school, taking care that the parting should not be barren on my side. Good fortune opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we have largely received, is but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the sensations. I had long felt with pleasure that many of my rustic scholars liked me, and when we parted, that consciousness was confirmed: they manifested their affection plainly and strongly. Deep was my gratification to find I had really a place in their unsophisticated hearts: I promised them that never a week should pass in future that I did not visit them, and give them an hour’s teaching in their school. Mr. Rivers came up as, having seen the classes, now numbering sixty girls, file out before me, and locked the door, I stood with the key in my hand, exchanging a few words of special farewell with some half-dozen of my best scholars: as decent, respectable, modest, and well-informed young women as could be found in the ranks of the British peasantry. And that is saying a great deal; for after all, the British peasantry are the best taught, best mannered, most self-respecting of any in Europe: since those days I have seen paysannes and Bäuerinnen; and the best of them seemed to me ignorant, coarse, and besotted, compared with my Morton girls. “Do you consider you have got your reward for a season of exertion?” asked Mr. Rivers, when they were gone. “Does not the consciousness of having done some real good in your day and generation give pleasure?” “Doubtless.” “And you have only toiled a few months! Would not a life devoted to the task of regenerating your race be well spent?” “Yes,” I said; “but I could not go on for ever so: I want to enjoy my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. I must enjoy them now; don’t recall either my mind or body to the school; I am out of it and disposed for full holiday.” He looked grave. “What now? What sudden eagerness is this you evince? What are you going to do?” “To be active: as active as I can. And first I must beg you to set Hannah at liberty, and get somebody else to wait on you.” “Do you want her?” “Yes, to go with me to Moor House. Diana and Mary will be at home in a week, and I want to have everything in order against their arrival.” “I understand. I thought you were for flying off on some excursion. It is better so: Hannah shall go with you.” “Tell her to be ready by to-morrow then; and here is the schoolroom key: I will give you the key of my cottage in the morning.” He took it. “You give it up very gleefully,” said he; “I don’t quite understand your light-heartedness, because I cannot tell what employment you propose to yourself as a substitute for the one you are relinquishing. What aim, what purpose, what ambition in life have you now?” “My first aim will be to _clean down_ (do you comprehend the full force of the expression?)—to _clean down_ Moor House from chamber to cellar; my next to rub it up with bees-wax, oil, and an indefinite number of cloths, till it glitters again; my third, to arrange every chair, table, bed, carpet, with mathematical precision; afterwards I shall go near to ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in every room; and lastly, the two days preceding that on which your sisters are expected will be devoted by Hannah and me to such a beating of eggs, sorting of currants, grating of spices, compounding of Christmas cakes, chopping up of materials for mince-pies, and solemnising of other culinary rites, as words can convey but an inadequate notion of to the uninitiated like you. My purpose, in short, is to have all things in an absolutely perfect state of readiness for Diana and Mary before next Thursday; and my ambition is to give them a beau-ideal of a welcome when they come.” St. John smiled slightly: still he was dissatisfied. “It is all very well for the present,” said he; “but seriously, I trust that when the first flush of vivacity is over, you will look a little higher than domestic endearments and household joys.” “The best things the world has!” I interrupted. “No, Jane, no: this world is not the scene of fruition; do not attempt to make it so: nor of rest; do not turn slothful.” “I mean, on the contrary, to be busy.” “Jane, I excuse you for the present: two months’ grace I allow you for the full enjoyment of your new position, and for pleasing yourself with this late-found charm of relationship; but _then_, I hope you will begin to look beyond Moor House and Morton, and sisterly society, and the selfish calm and sensual comfort of civilised affluence. I hope your energies will then once more trouble you with their strength.” I looked at him with surprise. “St. John,” I said, “I think you are almost wicked to talk so. I am disposed to be as content as a queen, and you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end?” “To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed to your keeping; and of which He will surely one day demand a strict account. Jane, I shall watch you closely and anxiously—I warn you of that. And try to restrain the disproportionate fervour with which you throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures. Don’t cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite transient objects. Do you hear, Jane?” “Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate cause to be happy, and I _will_ be happy. Goodbye!” Happy at Moor House I was, and hard I worked; and so did Hannah: she was charmed to see how jovial I could be amidst the bustle of a house turned topsy-turvy—how I could brush, and dust, and clean, and cook. And really, after a day or two of confusion worse confounded, it was delightful by degrees to invoke order from the chaos ourselves had made. I had previously taken a journey to S—— to purchase some new furniture: my cousins having given me _carte blanche_ to effect what alterations I pleased, and a sum having been set aside for that purpose. The ordinary sitting-room and bedrooms I left much as they were: for I knew Diana and Mary would derive more pleasure from seeing again the old homely tables, and chairs, and beds, than from the spectacle of the smartest innovations. Still some novelty was necessary, to give to their return the piquancy with which I wished it to be invested. Dark handsome new carpets and curtains, an arrangement of some carefully selected antique ornaments in porcelain and bronze, new coverings, and mirrors, and dressing-cases, for the toilet tables, answered the end: they looked fresh without being glaring. A spare parlour and bedroom I refurnished entirely, with old mahogany and crimson upholstery: I laid canvas on the passage, and carpets on the stairs. When all was finished, I thought Moor House as complete a model of bright modest snugness within, as it was, at this season, a specimen of wintry waste and desert dreariness without. The eventful Thursday at length came. They were expected about dark, and ere dusk fires were lit upstairs and below; the kitchen was in perfect trim; Hannah and I were dressed, and all was in readiness. St. John arrived first. I had entreated him to keep quite clear of the house till everything was arranged: and, indeed, the bare idea of the commotion, at once sordid and trivial, going on within its walls sufficed to scare him to estrangement. He found me in the kitchen, watching the progress of certain cakes for tea, then baking. Approaching the hearth, he asked, “If I was at last satisfied with housemaid’s work?” I answered by inviting him to accompany me on a general inspection of the result of my labours. With some difficulty, I got him to make the tour of the house. He just looked in at the doors I opened; and when he had wandered upstairs and downstairs, he said I must have gone through a great deal of fatigue and trouble to have effected such considerable changes in so short a time: but not a syllable did he utter indicating pleasure in the improved aspect of his abode. This silence damped me. I thought perhaps the alterations had disturbed some old associations he valued. I inquired whether this was the case: no doubt in a somewhat crest-fallen tone. “Not at all; he had, on the contrary, remarked that I had scrupulously respected every association: he feared, indeed, I must have bestowed more thought on the matter than it was worth. How many minutes, for instance, had I devoted to studying the arrangement of this very room?—By-the-bye, could I tell him where such a book was?” I showed him the volume on the shelf: he took it down, and withdrawing to his accustomed window recess, he began to read it. Now, I did not like this, reader. St. John was a good man; but I began to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard and cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for him—its peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally, he lived only to aspire—after what was good and great, certainly; but still he would never rest, nor approve of others resting round him. As I looked at his lofty forehead, still and pale as a white stone—at his fine lineaments fixed in study—I comprehended all at once that he would hardly make a good husband: that it would be a trying thing to be his wife. I understood, as by inspiration, the nature of his love for Miss Oliver; I agreed with him that it was but a love of the senses. I comprehended how he should despise himself for the feverish influence it exercised over him; how he should wish to stifle and destroy it; how he should mistrust its ever conducting permanently to his happiness or hers. I saw he was of the material from which nature hews her heroes—Christian and Pagan—her lawgivers, her statesmen, her conquerors: a steadfast bulwark for great interests to rest upon; but, at the fireside, too often a cold cumbrous column, gloomy and out of place. “This parlour is not his sphere,” I reflected: “the Himalayan ridge or Caffre bush, even the plague-cursed Guinea Coast swamp would suit him better. Well may he eschew the calm of domestic life; it is not his element: there his faculties stagnate—they cannot develop or appear to advantage. It is in scenes of strife and danger—where courage is proved, and energy exercised, and fortitude tasked—that he will speak and move, the leader and superior. A merry child would have the advantage of him on this hearth. He is right to choose a missionary’s career—I see it now.” “They are coming! they are coming!” cried Hannah, throwing open the parlour door. At the same moment old Carlo barked joyfully. Out I ran. It was now dark; but a rumbling of wheels was audible. Hannah soon had a lantern lit. The vehicle had stopped at the wicket; the driver opened the door: first one well-known form, then another, stepped out. In a minute I had my face under their bonnets, in contact first with Mary’s soft cheek, then with Diana’s flowing curls. They laughed—kissed me—then Hannah: patted Carlo, who was half wild with delight; asked eagerly if all was well; and being assured in the affirmative, hastened into the house. They were stiff with their long and jolting drive from Whitcross, and chilled with the frosty night air; but their pleasant countenances expanded to the cheerful firelight. While the driver and Hannah brought in the boxes, they demanded St. John. At this moment he advanced from the parlour. They both threw their arms round his neck at once. He gave each one quiet kiss, said in a low tone a few words of welcome, stood a while to be talked to, and then, intimating that he supposed they would soon rejoin him in the parlour, withdrew there as to a place of refuge. I had lit their candles to go upstairs, but Diana had first to give hospitable orders respecting the driver; this done, both followed me. They were delighted with the renovation and decorations of their rooms; with the new drapery, and fresh carpets, and rich tinted china vases: they expressed their gratification ungrudgingly. I had the pleasure of feeling that my arrangements met their wishes exactly, and that what I had done added a vivid charm to their joyous return home. Sweet was that evening. My cousins, full of exhilaration, were so eloquent in narrative and comment, that their fluency covered St. John’s taciturnity: he was sincerely glad to see his sisters; but in their glow of fervour and flow of joy he could not sympathise. The event of the day—that is, the return of Diana and Mary—pleased him; but the accompaniments of that event, the glad tumult, the garrulous glee of reception irked him: I saw he wished the calmer morrow was come. In the very meridian of the night’s enjoyment, about an hour after tea, a rap was heard at the door. Hannah entered with the intimation that “a poor lad was come, at that unlikely time, to fetch Mr. Rivers to see his mother, who was drawing away.” “Where does she live, Hannah?” “Clear up at Whitcross Brow, almost four miles off, and moor and moss all the way.” “Tell him I will go.” “I’m sure, sir, you had better not. It’s the worst road to travel after dark that can be: there’s no track at all over the bog. And then it is such a bitter night—the keenest wind you ever felt. You had better send word, sir, that you will be there in the morning.” But he was already in the passage, putting on his cloak; and without one objection, one murmur, he departed. It was then nine o’clock: he did not return till midnight. Starved and tired enough he was: but he looked happier than when he set out. He had performed an act of duty; made an exertion; felt his own strength to do and deny, and was on better terms with himself. I am afraid the whole of the ensuing week tried his patience. It was Christmas week: we took to no settled employment, but spent it in a sort of merry domestic dissipation. The air of the moors, the freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and Mary’s spirits like some life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning till noon, and from noon till night. They could always talk; and their discourse, witty, pithy, original, had such charms for me, that I preferred listening to, and sharing in it, to doing anything else. St. John did not rebuke our vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was seldom in the house; his parish was large, the population scattered, and he found daily business in visiting the sick and poor in its different districts. One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for some minutes, asked him, “If his plans were yet unchanged.” “Unchanged and unchangeable,” was the reply. And he proceeded to inform us that his departure from England was now definitively fixed for the ensuing year. “And Rosamond Oliver?” suggested Mary, the words seeming to escape her lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them, than she made a gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a book in his hand—it was his unsocial custom to read at meals—he closed it, and looked up. “Rosamond Oliver,” said he, “is about to be married to Mr. Granby, one of the best connected and most estimable residents in S——, grandson and heir to Sir Frederic Granby: I had the intelligence from her father yesterday.” His sisters looked at each other and at me; we all three looked at him: he was serene as glass. “The match must have been got up hastily,” said Diana: “they cannot have known each other long.” “But two months: they met in October at the county ball at S——. But where there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case, where the connection is in every point desirable, delays are unnecessary: they will be married as soon as S—— Place, which Sir Frederic gives up to them, can be refitted for their reception.” The first time I found St. John alone after this communication, I felt tempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed so little to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him more, I experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had already hazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him: his reserve was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed beneath it. He had not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he continually made little chilling differences between us, which did not at all tend to the development of cordiality: in short, now that I was acknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under the same roof with him, I felt the distance between us to be far greater than when he had known me only as the village schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had once been admitted to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his present frigidity. Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised his head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said— “You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won.” Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply: after a moment’s hesitation I answered— “But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors whose triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin you?” “I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall never be called upon to contend for such another. The event of the conflict is decisive: my way is now clear; I thank God for it!” So saying, he returned to his papers and his silence. As our mutual happiness (_i.e._, Diana’s, Mary’s, and mine) settled into a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and regular studies, St. John stayed more at home: he sat with us in the same room, sometimes for hours together. While Mary drew, Diana pursued a course of encyclopædic reading she had (to my awe and amazement) undertaken, and I fagged away at German, he pondered a mystic lore of his own: that of some Eastern tongue, the acquisition of which he thought necessary to his plans. Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and absorbed enough; but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the outlandish-looking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes fixing upon us, his fellow-students, with a curious intensity of observation: if caught, it would be instantly withdrawn; yet ever and anon, it returned searchingly to our table. I wondered what it meant: I wondered, too, at the punctual satisfaction he never failed to exhibit on an occasion that seemed to me of small moment, namely, my weekly visit to Morton school; and still more was I puzzled when, if the day was unfavourable, if there was snow, or rain, or high wind, and his sisters urged me not to go, he would invariably make light of their solicitude, and encourage me to accomplish the task without regard to the elements. “Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her,” he would say: “she can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of snow, as well as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and elastic;—better calculated to endure variations of climate than many more robust.” And when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired, and not a little weather-beaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to murmur would be to vex him: on all occasions fortitude pleased him; the reverse was a special annoyance. One afternoon, however, I got leave to stay at home, because I really had a cold. His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead: I sat reading Schiller; he, deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls. As I exchanged a translation for an exercise, I happened to look his way: there I found myself under the influence of the ever-watchful blue eye. How long it had been searching me through and through, and over and over, I cannot tell: so keen was it, and yet so cold, I felt for the moment superstitious—as if I were sitting in the room with something uncanny. “Jane, what are you doing?” “Learning German.” “I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee.” “You are not in earnest?” “In such earnest that I must have it so: and I will tell you why.” He then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he was himself at present studying; that, as he advanced, he was apt to forget the commencement; that it would assist him greatly to have a pupil with whom he might again and again go over the elements, and so fix them thoroughly in his mind; that his choice had hovered for some time between me and his sisters; but that he had fixed on me because he saw I could sit at a task the longest of the three. Would I do him this favour? I should not, perhaps, have to make the sacrifice long, as it wanted now barely three months to his departure. St. John was not a man to be lightly refused: you felt that every impression made on him, either for pain or pleasure, was deep-graved and permanent. I consented. When Diana and Mary returned, the former found her scholar transferred from her to her brother: she laughed, and both she and Mary agreed that St. John should never have persuaded them to such a step. He answered quietly— “I know it.” I found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting master: he expected me to do a great deal; and when I fulfilled his expectations, he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation. By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than his indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by, because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity (at least in me) was distasteful to him. I was so fully aware that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his presence every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I fell under a freezing spell. When he said “go,” I went; “come,” I came; “do this,” I did it. But I did not love my servitude: I wished, many a time, he had continued to neglect me. One evening when, at bedtime, his sisters and I stood round him, bidding him good-night, he kissed each of them, as was his custom; and, as was equally his custom, he gave me his hand. Diana, who chanced to be in a frolicsome humour (_she_ was not painfully controlled by his will; for hers, in another way, was as strong), exclaimed— “St. John! you used to call Jane your third sister, but you don’t treat her as such: you should kiss her too.” She pushed me towards him. I thought Diana very provoking, and felt uncomfortably confused; and while I was thus thinking and feeling, St. John bent his head; his Greek face was brought to a level with mine, his eyes questioned my eyes piercingly—he kissed me. There are no such things as marble kisses or ice kisses, or I should say my ecclesiastical cousin’s salute belonged to one of these classes; but there may be experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss. When given, he viewed me to learn the result; it was not striking: I am sure I did not blush; perhaps I might have turned a little pale, for I felt as if this kiss were a seal affixed to my fetters. He never omitted the ceremony afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with which I underwent it, seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm. As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation. He wanted to train me to an elevation I could never reach; it racked me hourly to aspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing was as impossible as to mould my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern, to give to my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint and solemn lustre of his own. Not his ascendancy alone, however, held me in thrall at present. Of late it had been easy enough for me to look sad: a cankering evil sat at my heart and drained my happiness at its source—the evil of suspense. Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr. Rochester, reader, amidst these changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment. His idea was still with me, because it was not a vapour sunshine could disperse, nor a sand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was a name graven on a tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it inscribed. The craving to know what had become of him followed me everywhere; when I was at Morton, I re-entered my cottage every evening to think of that; and now at Moor House, I sought my bedroom each night to brood over it. In the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr. Briggs about the will, I had inquired if he knew anything of Mr. Rochester’s present residence and state of health; but, as St. John had conjectured, he was quite ignorant of all concerning him. I then wrote to Mrs. Fairfax, entreating information on the subject. I had calculated with certainty on this step answering my end: I felt sure it would elicit an early answer. I was astonished when a fortnight passed without reply; but when two months wore away, and day after day the post arrived and brought nothing for me, I fell a prey to the keenest anxiety. I wrote again: there was a chance of my first letter having missed. Renewed hope followed renewed effort: it shone like the former for some weeks, then, like it, it faded, flickered: not a line, not a word reached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died out, and then I felt dark indeed. A fine spring shone round me, which I could not enjoy. Summer approached; Diana tried to cheer me: she said I looked ill, and wished to accompany me to the sea-side. This St. John opposed; he said I did not want dissipation, I wanted employment; my present life was too purposeless, I required an aim; and, I suppose, by way of supplying deficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindostanee, and grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment: and I, like a fool, never thought of resisting him—I could not resist him. One day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual; the ebb was occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment. Hannah had told me in the morning there was a letter for me, and when I went down to take it, almost certain that the long-looked for tidings were vouchsafed me at last, I found only an unimportant note from Mr. Briggs on business. The bitter check had wrung from me some tears; and now, as I sat poring over the crabbed characters and flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe, my eyes filled again. St. John called me to his side to read; in attempting to do this my voice failed me: words were lost in sobs. He and I were the only occupants of the parlour: Diana was practising her music in the drawing-room, Mary was gardening—it was a very fine May day, clear, sunny, and breezy. My companion expressed no surprise at this emotion, nor did he question me as to its cause; he only said— “We will wait a few minutes, Jane, till you are more composed.” And while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and patient, leaning on his desk, and looking like a physician watching with the eye of science an expected and fully understood crisis in a patient’s malady. Having stifled my sobs, wiped my eyes, and muttered something about not being very well that morning, I resumed my task, and succeeded in completing it. St. John put away my books and his, locked his desk, and said— “Now, Jane, you shall take a walk; and with me.” “I will call Diana and Mary.” “No; I want only one companion this morning, and that must be you. Put on your things; go out by the kitchen-door: take the road towards the head of Marsh Glen: I will join you in a moment.” I know no medium: I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other; and as neither present circumstances warranted, nor my present mood inclined me to mutiny, I observed careful obedience to St. John’s directions; and in ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen, side by side with him. The breeze was from the west: it came over the hills, sweet with scents of heath and rush; the sky was of stainless blue; the stream descending the ravine, swelled with past spring rains, poured along plentiful and clear, catching golden gleams from the sun, and sapphire tints from the firmament. As we advanced and left the track, we trod a soft turf, mossy fine and emerald green, minutely enamelled with a tiny white flower, and spangled with a star-like yellow blossom: the hills, meantime, shut us quite in; for the glen, towards its head, wound to their very core. “Let us rest here,” said St. John, as we reached the first stragglers of a battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond which the beck rushed down a waterfall; and where, still a little farther, the mountain shook off turf and flower, had only heath for raiment and crag for gem—where it exaggerated the wild to the savage, and exchanged the fresh for the frowning—where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude, and a last refuge for silence. I took a seat: St. John stood near me. He looked up the pass and down the hollow; his glance wandered away with the stream, and returned to traverse the unclouded heaven which coloured it: he removed his hat, let the breeze stir his hair and kiss his brow. He seemed in communion with the genius of the haunt: with his eye he bade farewell to something. “And I shall see it again,” he said aloud, “in dreams when I sleep by the Ganges: and again in a more remote hour—when another slumber overcomes me—on the shore of a darker stream!” Strange words of a strange love! An austere patriot’s passion for his fatherland! He sat down; for half-an-hour we never spoke; neither he to me nor I to him: that interval past, he recommenced— “Jane, I go in six weeks; I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman which sails on the 20th of June.” “God will protect you; for you have undertaken His work,” I answered. “Yes,” said he, “there is my glory and joy. I am the servant of an infallible Master. I am not going out under human guidance, subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms: my king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect. It seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner,—to join in the same enterprise.” “All have not your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble to wish to march with the strong.” “I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them: I address only such as are worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it.” “Those are few in number, and difficult to discover.” “You say truly; but when found, it is right to stir them up—to urge and exhort them to the effort—to show them what their gifts are, and why they were given—to speak Heaven’s message in their ear,—to offer them, direct from God, a place in the ranks of His chosen.” “If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own hearts be the first to inform them of it?” I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me: I trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once declare and rivet the spell. “And what does _your_ heart say?” demanded St. John. “My heart is mute,—my heart is mute,” I answered, struck and thrilled. “Then I must speak for it,” continued the deep, relentless voice. “Jane, come with me to India: come as my helpmeet and fellow-labourer.” The glen and sky spun round: the hills heaved! It was as if I had heard a summons from Heaven—as if a visionary messenger, like him of Macedonia, had enounced, “Come over and help us!” But I was no apostle,—I could not behold the herald,—I could not receive his call. “Oh, St. John!” I cried, “have some mercy!” I appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed his duty, knew neither mercy nor remorse. He continued— “God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife. It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love. A missionary’s wife you must—shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you—not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s service.” “I am not fit for it: I have no vocation,” I said. He had calculated on these first objections: he was not irritated by them. Indeed, as he leaned back against the crag behind him, folded his arms on his chest, and fixed his countenance, I saw he was prepared for a long and trying opposition, and had taken in a stock of patience to last him to its close—resolved, however, that that close should be conquest for him. “Humility, Jane,” said he, “is the groundwork of Christian virtues: you say right that you are not fit for the work. Who is fit for it? Or who, that ever was truly called, believed himself worthy of the summons? I, for instance, am but dust and ashes. With St. Paul, I acknowledge myself the chiefest of sinners; but I do not suffer this sense of my personal vileness to daunt me. I know my Leader: that He is just as well as mighty; and while He has chosen a feeble instrument to perform a great task, He will, from the boundless stores of His providence, supply the inadequacy of the means to the end. Think like me, Jane—trust like me. It is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean on: do not doubt but it will bear the weight of your human weakness.” “I do not understand a missionary life: I have never studied missionary labours.” “There I, humble as I am, can give you the aid you want: I can set you your task from hour to hour; stand by you always; help you from moment to moment. This I could do in the beginning: soon (for I know your powers) you would be as strong and apt as myself, and would not require my help.” “But my powers—where are they for this undertaking? I do not feel them. Nothing speaks or stirs in me while you talk. I am sensible of no light kindling—no life quickening—no voice counselling or cheering. Oh, I wish I could make you see how much my mind is at this moment like a rayless dungeon, with one shrinking fear fettered in its depths—the fear of being persuaded by you to attempt what I cannot accomplish!” “I have an answer for you—hear it. I have watched you ever since we first met: I have made you my study for ten months. I have proved you in that time by sundry tests: and what have I seen and elicited? In the village school I found you could perform well, punctually, uprightly, labour uncongenial to your habits and inclinations; I saw you could perform it with capacity and tact: you could win while you controlled. In the calm with which you learnt you had become suddenly rich, I read a mind clear of the vice of Demas:—lucre had no undue power over you. In the resolute readiness with which you cut your wealth into four shares, keeping but one to yourself, and relinquishing the three others to the claim of abstract justice, I recognised a soul that revelled in the flame and excitement of sacrifice. In the tractability with which, at my wish, you forsook a study in which you were interested, and adopted another because it interested me; in the untiring assiduity with which you have since persevered in it—in the unflagging energy and unshaken temper with which you have met its difficulties—I acknowledge the complement of the qualities I seek. Jane, you are docile, diligent, disinterested, faithful, constant, and courageous; very gentle, and very heroic: cease to mistrust yourself—I can trust you unreservedly. As a conductress of Indian schools, and a helper amongst Indian women, your assistance will be to me invaluable.” My iron shroud contracted round me; persuasion advanced with slow sure step. Shut my eyes as I would, these last words of his succeeded in making the way, which had seemed blocked up, comparatively clear. My work, which had appeared so vague, so hopelessly diffuse, condensed itself as he proceeded, and assumed a definite form under his shaping hand. He waited for an answer. I demanded a quarter of an hour to think, before I again hazarded a reply. “Very willingly,” he rejoined; and rising, he strode a little distance up the pass, threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still. He threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still “I _can_ do what he wants me to do: I am forced to see and acknowledge that,” I meditated,—“that is, if life be spared me. But I feel mine is not the existence to be long protracted under an Indian sun. What then? He does not care for that: when my time came to die, he would resign me, in all serenity and sanctity, to the God who gave me. The case is very plain before me. In leaving England, I should leave a loved but empty land—Mr. Rochester is not there; and if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life to replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly the most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble cares and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void left by uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say, Yes—and yet I shudder. Alas! If I join St. John, I abandon half myself: if I go to India, I go to premature death. And how will the interval between leaving England for India, and India for the grave, be filled? Oh, I know well! That, too, is very clear to my vision. By straining to satisfy St. John till my sinews ache, I _shall_ satisfy him—to the finest central point and farthest outward circle of his expectations. If I _do_ go with him—if I _do_ make the sacrifice he urges, I will make it absolutely: I will throw all on the altar—heart, vitals, the entire victim. He will never love me; but he shall approve me; I will show him energies he has not yet seen, resources he has never suspected. Yes, I can work as hard as he can, and with as little grudging. “Consent, then, to his demand is possible: but for one item—one dreadful item. It is—that he asks me to be his wife, and has no more of a husband’s heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock, down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge. He prizes me as a soldier would a good weapon; and that is all. Unmarried to him, this would never grieve me; but can I let him complete his calculations—coolly put into practice his plans—go through the wedding ceremony? Can I receive from him the bridal ring, endure all the forms of love (which I doubt not he would scrupulously observe) and know that the spirit was quite absent? Can I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a sacrifice made on principle? No: such a martyrdom would be monstrous. I will never undergo it. As his sister, I might accompany him—not as his wife: I will tell him so.” I looked towards the knoll: there he lay, still as a prostrate column; his face turned to me: his eye beaming watchful and keen. He started to his feet and approached me. “I am ready to go to India, if I may go free.” “Your answer requires a commentary,” he said; “it is not clear.” “You have hitherto been my adopted brother—I, your adopted sister: let us continue as such: you and I had better not marry.” He shook his head. “Adopted fraternity will not do in this case. If you were my real sister it would be different: I should take you, and seek no wife. But as it is, either our union must be consecrated and sealed by marriage, or it cannot exist: practical obstacles oppose themselves to any other plan. Do you not see it, Jane? Consider a moment—your strong sense will guide you.” I did consider; and still my sense, such as it was, directed me only to the fact that we did not love each other as man and wife should: and therefore it inferred we ought not to marry. I said so. “St. John,” I returned, “I regard you as a brother—you, me as a sister: so let us continue.” “We cannot—we cannot,” he answered, with short, sharp determination: “it would not do. You have said you will go with me to India: remember—you have said that.” “Conditionally.” “Well—well. To the main point—the departure with me from England, the co-operation with me in my future labours—you do not object. You have already as good as put your hand to the plough: you are too consistent to withdraw it. You have but one end to keep in view—how the work you have undertaken can best be done. Simplify your complicated interests, feelings, thoughts, wishes, aims; merge all considerations in one purpose: that of fulfilling with effect—with power—the mission of your great Master. To do so, you must have a coadjutor: not a brother—that is a loose tie—but a husband. I, too, do not want a sister: a sister might any day be taken from me. I want a wife: the sole helpmeet I can influence efficiently in life, and retain absolutely till death.” I shuddered as he spoke: I felt his influence in my marrow—his hold on my limbs. “Seek one elsewhere than in me, St. John: seek one fitted to you.” “One fitted to my purpose, you mean—fitted to my vocation. Again I tell you it is not the insignificant private individual—the mere man, with the man’s selfish senses—I wish to mate: it is the missionary.” “And I will give the missionary my energies—it is all he wants—but not myself: that would be only adding the husk and shell to the kernel. For them he has no use: I retain them.” “You cannot—you ought not. Do you think God will be satisfied with half an oblation? Will He accept a mutilated sacrifice? It is the cause of God I advocate: it is under His standard I enlist you. I cannot accept on His behalf a divided allegiance: it must be entire.” “Oh! I will give my heart to God,” I said. “_You_ do not want it.” I will not swear, reader, that there was not something of repressed sarcasm both in the tone in which I uttered this sentence, and in the feeling that accompanied it. I had silently feared St. John till now, because I had not understood him. He had held me in awe, because he had held me in doubt. How much of him was saint, how much mortal, I could not heretofore tell: but revelations were being made in this conference: the analysis of his nature was proceeding before my eyes. I saw his fallibilities: I comprehended them. I understood that, sitting there where I did, on the bank of heath, and with that handsome form before me, I sat at the feet of a man, erring as I. The veil fell from his hardness and despotism. Having felt in him the presence of these qualities, I felt his imperfection and took courage. I was with an equal—one with whom I might argue—one whom, if I saw good, I might resist. He was silent after I had uttered the last sentence, and I presently risked an upward glance at his countenance. His eye, bent on me, expressed at once stern surprise and keen inquiry. “Is she sarcastic, and sarcastic to _me!_” it seemed to say. “What does this signify?” “Do not let us forget that this is a solemn matter,” he said ere long; “one of which we may neither think nor talk lightly without sin. I trust, Jane, you are in earnest when you say you will serve your heart to God: it is all I want. Once wrench your heart from man, and fix it on your Maker, the advancement of that Maker’s spiritual kingdom on earth will be your chief delight and endeavour; you will be ready to do at once whatever furthers that end. You will see what impetus would be given to your efforts and mine by our physical and mental union in marriage: the only union that gives a character of permanent conformity to the destinies and designs of human beings; and, passing over all minor caprices—all trivial difficulties and delicacies of feeling—all scruple about the degree, kind, strength or tenderness of mere personal inclination—you will hasten to enter into that union at once.” “Shall I?” I said briefly; and I looked at his features, beautiful in their harmony, but strangely formidable in their still severity; at his brow, commanding but not open; at his eyes, bright and deep and searching, but never soft; at his tall imposing figure; and fancied myself in idea _his wife_. Oh! it would never do! As his curate, his comrade, all would be right: I would cross oceans with him in that capacity; toil under Eastern suns, in Asian deserts with him in that office; admire and emulate his courage and devotion and vigour; accommodate quietly to his masterhood; smile undisturbed at his ineradicable ambition; discriminate the Christian from the man: profoundly esteem the one, and freely forgive the other. I should suffer often, no doubt, attached to him only in this capacity: my body would be under rather a stringent yoke, but my heart and mind would be free. I should still have my unblighted self to turn to: my natural unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of loneliness. There would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which he never came, and sentiments growing there fresh and sheltered which his austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march trample down: but as his wife—at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked—forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital—_this_ would be unendurable. “St. John!” I exclaimed, when I had got so far in my meditation. “Well?” he answered icily. “I repeat I freely consent to go with you as your fellow-missionary, but not as your wife; I cannot marry you and become part of you.” “A part of me you must become,” he answered steadily; “otherwise the whole bargain is void. How can I, a man not yet thirty, take out with me to India a girl of nineteen, unless she be married to me? How can we be for ever together—sometimes in solitudes, sometimes amidst savage tribes—and unwed?” “Very well,” I said shortly; “under the circumstances, quite as well as if I were either your real sister, or a man and a clergyman like yourself.” “It is known that you are not my sister; I cannot introduce you as such: to attempt it would be to fasten injurious suspicions on us both. And for the rest, though you have a man’s vigorous brain, you have a woman’s heart and—it would not do.” “It would do,” I affirmed with some disdain, “perfectly well. I have a woman’s heart, but not where you are concerned; for you I have only a comrade’s constancy; a fellow-soldier’s frankness, fidelity, fraternity, if you like; a neophyte’s respect and submission to his hierophant: nothing more—don’t fear.” “It is what I want,” he said, speaking to himself; “it is just what I want. And there are obstacles in the way: they must be hewn down. Jane, you would not repent marrying me—be certain of that; we _must_ be married. I repeat it: there is no other way; and undoubtedly enough of love would follow upon marriage to render the union right even in your eyes.” “I scorn your idea of love,” I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. “I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.” He looked at me fixedly, compressing his well-cut lips while he did so. Whether he was incensed or surprised, or what, it was not easy to tell: he could command his countenance thoroughly. “I scarcely expected to hear that expression from you,” he said: “I think I have done and uttered nothing to deserve scorn.” I was touched by his gentle tone, and overawed by his high, calm mien. “Forgive me the words, St. John; but it is your own fault that I have been roused to speak so unguardedly. You have introduced a topic on which our natures are at variance—a topic we should never discuss: the very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality were required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage—forget it.” “No,” said he; “it is a long-cherished scheme, and the only one which can secure my great end: but I shall urge you no further at present. To-morrow, I leave home for Cambridge: I have many friends there to whom I should wish to say farewell. I shall be absent a fortnight—take that space of time to consider my offer: and do not forget that if you reject it, it is not me you deny, but God. Through my means, He opens to you a noble career; as my wife only can you enter upon it. Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case you should be numbered with those who have denied the faith, and are worse than infidels!” He had done. Turning from me, he once more “Looked to river, looked to hill.” But this time his feelings were all pent in his heart: I was not worthy to hear them uttered. As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected submission—the disapprobation of a cool, inflexible judgment, which has detected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to sympathise: in short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into obedience: it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with my perversity, and allowed so long a space for reflection and repentance. That night, after he had kissed his sisters, he thought proper to forget even to shake hands with me, but left the room in silence. I—who, though I had no love, had much friendship for him—was hurt by the marked omission: so much hurt that tears started to my eyes. “I see you and St. John have been quarrelling, Jane,” said Diana, “during your walk on the moor. But go after him; he is now lingering in the passage expecting you—he will make it up.” I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be happy than dignified; and I ran after him—he stood at the foot of the stairs. “Good-night, St. John,” said I. “Good-night, Jane,” he replied calmly. “Then shake hands,” I added. What a cold, loose touch, he impressed on my fingers! He was deeply displeased by what had occurred that day; cordiality would not warm, nor tears move him. No happy reconciliation was to be had with him—no cheering smile or generous word: but still the Christian was patient and placid; and when I asked him if he forgave me, he answered that he was not in the habit of cherishing the remembrance of vexation; that he had nothing to forgive, not having been offended. And with that answer he left me. I would much rather he had knocked me down. ', 'He did not leave for Cambridge the next day, as he had said he would. He deferred his departure a whole week, and during that time he made me feel what severe punishment a good yet stern, a conscientious yet implacable man can inflict on one who has offended him. Without one overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word, he contrived to impress me momently with the conviction that I was put beyond the pale of his favour. Not that St. John harboured a spirit of unchristian vindictiveness—not that he would have injured a hair of my head, if it had been fully in his power to do so. Both by nature and principle, he was superior to the mean gratification of vengeance: he had forgiven me for saying I scorned him and his love, but he had not forgotten the words; and as long as he and I lived he never would forget them. I saw by his look, when he turned to me, that they were always written on the air between me and him; whenever I spoke, they sounded in my voice to his ear, and their echo toned every answer he gave me. He did not abstain from conversing with me: he even called me as usual each morning to join him at his desk; and I fear the corrupt man within him had a pleasure unimparted to, and unshared by, the pure Christian, in evincing with what skill he could, while acting and speaking apparently just as usual, extract from every deed and every phrase the spirit of interest and approval which had formerly communicated a certain austere charm to his language and manner. To me, he was in reality become no longer flesh, but marble; his eye was a cold, bright, blue gem; his tongue a speaking instrument—nothing more. All this was torture to me—refined, lingering torture. It kept up a slow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief, which harassed and crushed me altogether. I felt how—if I were his wife, this good man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me, without drawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime. Especially I felt this when I made any attempt to propitiate him. No ruth met my ruth. _He_ experienced no suffering from estrangement—no yearning after reconciliation; and though, more than once, my fast falling tears blistered the page over which we both bent, they produced no more effect on him than if his heart had been really a matter of stone or metal. To his sisters, meantime, he was somewhat kinder than usual: as if afraid that mere coldness would not sufficiently convince me how completely I was banished and banned, he added the force of contrast; and this I am sure he did not by malice, but on principle. The night before he left home, happening to see him walking in the garden about sunset, and remembering, as I looked at him, that this man, alienated as he now was, had once saved my life, and that we were near relations, I was moved to make a last attempt to regain his friendship. I went out and approached him as he stood leaning over the little gate; I spoke to the point at once. “St. John, I am unhappy because you are still angry with me. Let us be friends.” “I hope we are friends,” was the unmoved reply; while he still watched the rising of the moon, which he had been contemplating as I approached. “No, St. John, we are not friends as we were. You know that.” “Are we not? That is wrong. For my part, I wish you no ill and all good.” “I believe you, St. John; for I am sure you are incapable of wishing any one ill; but, as I am your kinswoman, I should desire somewhat more of affection than that sort of general philanthropy you extend to mere strangers.” “Of course,” he said. “Your wish is reasonable, and I am far from regarding you as a stranger.” This, spoken in a cool, tranquil tone, was mortifying and baffling enough. Had I attended to the suggestions of pride and ire, I should immediately have left him; but something worked within me more strongly than those feelings could. I deeply venerated my cousin’s talent and principle. His friendship was of value to me: to lose it tried me severely. I would not so soon relinquish the attempt to reconquer it. “Must we part in this way, St. John? And when you go to India, will you leave me so, without a kinder word than you have yet spoken?” He now turned quite from the moon and faced me. “When I go to India, Jane, will I leave you! What! do you not go to India?” “You said I could not unless I married you.” “And you will not marry me! You adhere to that resolution?” Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put into the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their displeasure? “No. St. John, I will not marry you. I adhere to my resolution.” The avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward, but it did not yet crash down. “Once more, why this refusal?” he asked. “Formerly,” I answered, “because you did not love me; now, I reply, because you almost hate me. If I were to marry you, you would kill me. You are killing me now.” His lips and cheeks turned white—quite white. “_I should kill you_—_I am killing you_? Your words are such as ought not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue. They betray an unfortunate state of mind: they merit severe reproof: they would seem inexcusable, but that it is the duty of man to forgive his fellow even until seventy-and-seven times.” I had finished the business now. While earnestly wishing to erase from his mind the trace of my former offence, I had stamped on that tenacious surface another and far deeper impression: I had burnt it in. “Now you will indeed hate me,” I said. “It is useless to attempt to conciliate you: I see I have made an eternal enemy of you.” A fresh wrong did these words inflict: the worse, because they touched on the truth. That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary spasm. I knew the steely ire I had whetted. I was heart-wrung. “You utterly misinterpret my words,” I said, at once seizing his hand: “I have no intention to grieve or pain you—indeed, I have not.” Most bitterly he smiled—most decidedly he withdrew his hand from mine. “And now you recall your promise, and will not go to India at all, I presume?” said he, after a considerable pause. “Yes, I will, as your assistant,” I answered. A very long silence succeeded. What struggle there was in him between Nature and Grace in this interval, I cannot tell: only singular gleams scintillated in his eyes, and strange shadows passed over his face. He spoke at last. “I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your age proposing to accompany abroad a single man of mine. I proved it to you in such terms as, I should have thought, would have prevented your ever again alluding to the plan. That you have done so, I regret—for your sake.” I interrupted him. Anything like a tangible reproach gave me courage at once. “Keep to common sense, St. John: you are verging on nonsense. You pretend to be shocked by what I have said. You are not really shocked: for, with your superior mind, you cannot be either so dull or so conceited as to misunderstand my meaning. I say again, I will be your curate, if you like, but never your wife.” Again he turned lividly pale; but, as before, controlled his passion perfectly. He answered emphatically but calmly— “A female curate, who is not my wife, would never suit me. With me, then, it seems, you cannot go: but if you are sincere in your offer, I will, while in town, speak to a married missionary, whose wife needs a coadjutor. Your own fortune will make you independent of the Society’s aid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your promise and deserting the band you engaged to join.” Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise or entered into any engagement; and this language was all much too hard and much too despotic for the occasion. I replied— “There is no dishonour, no breach of promise, no desertion in the case. I am not under the slightest obligation to go to India, especially with strangers. With you I would have ventured much, because I admire, confide in, and, as a sister, I love you; but I am convinced that, go when and with whom I would, I should not live long in that climate.” “Ah! you are afraid of yourself,” he said, curling his lip. “I am. God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as you wish me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing suicide. Moreover, before I definitively resolve on quitting England, I will know for certain whether I cannot be of greater use by remaining in it than by leaving it.” “What do you mean?” “It would be fruitless to attempt to explain; but there is a point on which I have long endured painful doubt, and I can go nowhere till by some means that doubt is removed.” “I know where your heart turns and to what it clings. The interest you cherish is lawless and unconsecrated. Long since you ought to have crushed it: now you should blush to allude to it. You think of Mr. Rochester?” It was true. I confessed it by silence. “Are you going to seek Mr. Rochester?” “I must find out what is become of him.” “It remains for me, then,” he said, “to remember you in my prayers, and to entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may not indeed become a castaway. I had thought I recognised in you one of the chosen. But God sees not as man sees: _His_ will be done—” He opened the gate, passed through it, and strayed away down the glen. He was soon out of sight. On re-entering the parlour, I found Diana standing at the window, looking very thoughtful. Diana was a great deal taller than I: she put her hand on my shoulder, and, stooping, examined my face. “Jane,” she said, “you are always agitated and pale now. I am sure there is something the matter. Tell me what business St. John and you have on hands. I have watched you this half hour from the window; you must forgive my being such a spy, but for a long time I have fancied I hardly know what. St. John is a strange being—” She paused—I did not speak: soon she resumed— “That brother of mine cherishes peculiar views of some sort respecting you, I am sure: he has long distinguished you by a notice and interest he never showed to any one else—to what end? I wish he loved you—does he, Jane?” I put her cool hand to my hot forehead; “No, Die, not one whit.” “Then why does he follow you so with his eyes, and get you so frequently alone with him, and keep you so continually at his side? Mary and I had both concluded he wished you to marry him.” “He does—he has asked me to be his wife.” Diana clapped her hands. “That is just what we hoped and thought! And you will marry him, Jane, won’t you? And then he will stay in England.” “Far from that, Diana; his sole idea in proposing to me is to procure a fitting fellow-labourer in his Indian toils.” “What! He wishes you to go to India?” “Yes.” “Madness!” she exclaimed. “You would not live three months there, I am certain. You never shall go: you have not consented, have you, Jane?” “I have refused to marry him—” “And have consequently displeased him?” she suggested. “Deeply: he will never forgive me, I fear: yet I offered to accompany him as his sister.” “It was frantic folly to do so, Jane. Think of the task you undertook—one of incessant fatigue, where fatigue kills even the strong, and you are weak. St. John—you know him—would urge you to impossibilities: with him there would be no permission to rest during the hot hours; and unfortunately, I have noticed, whatever he exacts, you force yourself to perform. I am astonished you found courage to refuse his hand. You do not love him then, Jane?” “Not as a husband.” “Yet he is a handsome fellow.” “And I am so plain, you see, Die. We should never suit.” “Plain! You? Not at all. You are much too pretty, as well as too good, to be grilled alive in Calcutta.” And again she earnestly conjured me to give up all thoughts of going out with her brother. “I must indeed,” I said; “for when just now I repeated the offer of serving him for a deacon, he expressed himself shocked at my want of decency. He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in proposing to accompany him unmarried: as if I had not from the first hoped to find in him a brother, and habitually regarded him as such.” “What makes you say he does not love you, Jane?” “You should hear himself on the subject. He has again and again explained that it is not himself, but his office he wishes to mate. He has told me I am formed for labour—not for love: which is true, no doubt. But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows that I am not formed for marriage. Would it not be strange, Die, to be chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool?” “Insupportable—unnatural—out of the question!” “And then,” I continued, “though I have only sisterly affection for him now, yet, if forced to be his wife, I can imagine the possibility of conceiving an inevitable, strange, torturing kind of love for him, because he is so talented; and there is often a certain heroic grandeur in his look, manner, and conversation. In that case, my lot would become unspeakably wretched. He would not want me to love him; and if I showed the feeling, he would make me sensible that it was a superfluity, unrequired by him, unbecoming in me. I know he would.” “And yet St. John is a good man,” said Diana. “He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. It is better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way, lest, in his progress, he should trample them down. Here he comes! I will leave you, Diana.” And I hastened upstairs as I saw him entering the garden. But I was forced to meet him again at supper. During that meal he appeared just as composed as usual. I had thought he would hardly speak to me, and I was certain he had given up the pursuit of his matrimonial scheme: the sequel showed I was mistaken on both points. He addressed me precisely in his ordinary manner, or what had, of late, been his ordinary manner—one scrupulously polite. No doubt he had invoked the help of the Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had roused in him, and now believed he had forgiven me once more. For the evening reading before prayers, he selected the twenty-first chapter of Revelation. It was at all times pleasant to listen while from his lips fell the words of the Bible: never did his fine voice sound at once so sweet and full—never did his manner become so impressive in its noble simplicity, as when he delivered the oracles of God: and to-night that voice took a more solemn tone—that manner a more thrilling meaning—as he sat in the midst of his household circle (the May moon shining in through the uncurtained window, and rendering almost unnecessary the light of the candle on the table): as he sat there, bending over the great old Bible, and described from its page the vision of the new heaven and the new earth—told how God would come to dwell with men, how He would wipe away all tears from their eyes, and promised that there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any more pain, because the former things were passed away. The succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them: especially as I felt, by the slight, indescribable alteration in sound, that in uttering them, his eye had turned on me. “He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But,” was slowly, distinctly read, “the fearful, the unbelieving, &c., shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” Henceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me. A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, marked his enunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter. The reader believed his name was already written in the Lamb’s book of life, and he yearned after the hour which should admit him to the city to which the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour; which has no need of sun or moon to shine in it, because the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. In the prayer following the chapter, all his energy gathered—all his stern zeal woke: he was in deep earnest, wrestling with God, and resolved on a conquest. He supplicated strength for the weak-hearted; guidance for wanderers from the fold: a return, even at the eleventh hour, for those whom the temptations of the world and the flesh were luring from the narrow path. He asked, he urged, he claimed the boon of a brand snatched from the burning. Earnestness is ever deeply solemn: first, as I listened to that prayer, I wondered at his; then, when it continued and rose, I was touched by it, and at last awed. He felt the greatness and goodness of his purpose so sincerely: others who heard him plead for it, could not but feel it too. The prayer over, we took leave of him: he was to go at a very early hour in the morning. Diana and Mary having kissed him, left the room—in compliance, I think, with a whispered hint from him: I tendered my hand, and wished him a pleasant journey. “Thank you, Jane. As I said, I shall return from Cambridge in a fortnight: that space, then, is yet left you for reflection. If I listened to human pride, I should say no more to you of marriage with me; but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my first aim—to do all things to the glory of God. My Master was long-suffering: so will I be. I cannot give you up to perdition as a vessel of wrath: repent—resolve, while there is yet time. Remember, we are bid to work while it is day—warned that ‘the night cometh when no man shall work.’ Remember the fate of Dives, who had his good things in this life. God give you strength to choose that better part which shall not be taken from you!” He laid his hand on my head as he uttered the last words. He had spoken earnestly, mildly: his look was not, indeed, that of a lover beholding his mistress, but it was that of a pastor recalling his wandering sheep—or better, of a guardian angel watching the soul for which he is responsible. All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not; whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots—provided only they be sincere—have their sublime moments, when they subdue and rule. I felt veneration for St. John—veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me at once to the point I had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease struggling with him—to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf of his existence, and there lose my own. I was almost as hard beset by him now as I had been once before, in a different way, by another. I was a fool both times. To have yielded then would have been an error of principle; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment. So I think at this hour, when I look back to the crisis through the quiet medium of time: I was unconscious of folly at the instant. I stood motionless under my hierophant’s touch. My refusals were forgotten—my fears overcome—my wrestlings paralysed. The Impossible—_i.e._, my marriage with St. John—was fast becoming the Possible. All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep. Religion called—Angels beckoned—God commanded—life rolled together like a scroll—death’s gates opening, showed eternity beyond: it seemed, that for safety and bliss there, all here might be sacrificed in a second. The dim room was full of visions. “Could you decide now?” asked the missionary. The inquiry was put in gentle tones: he drew me to him as gently. Oh, that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force! I could resist St. John’s wrath: I grew pliant as a reed under his kindness. Yet I knew all the time, if I yielded now, I should not the less be made to repent, some day, of my former rebellion. His nature was not changed by one hour of solemn prayer: it was only elevated. “I could decide if I were but certain,” I answered: “were I but convinced that it is God’s will I should marry you, I could vow to marry you here and now—come afterwards what would!” “My prayers are heard!” ejaculated St. John. He pressed his hand firmer on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm, _almost_ as if he loved me (I say _almost_—I knew the difference—for I had felt what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love out of the question, and thought only of duty). I contended with my inward dimness of vision, before which clouds yet rolled. I sincerely, deeply, fervently longed to do what was right; and only that. “Show me, show me the path!” I entreated of Heaven. I was excited more than I had ever been; and whether what followed was the effect of excitement the reader shall judge. All the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John and myself, were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out: the room was full of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick: I heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it through, and passed at once to my head and extremities. The feeling was not like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor, from which they were now summoned and forced to wake. They rose expectant: eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my bones. “What have you heard? What do you see?” asked St. John. I saw nothing, but I heard a voice somewhere cry— “Jane! Jane! Jane!”—nothing more. “O God! what is it?” I gasped. I might have said, “Where is it?” for it did not seem in the room—nor in the house—nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air—nor from under the earth—nor from overhead. I had heard it—where, or whence, for ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being—a known, loved, well-remembered voice—that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently. “I am coming!” I cried. “Wait for me! Oh, I will come!” I flew to the door and looked into the passage: it was dark. I ran out into the garden: it was void. “Where are you?” I exclaimed. The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back—“Where are you?” I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs: all was moorland loneliness and midnight hush. “Down superstition!” I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the black yew at the gate. “This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft: it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did—no miracle—but her best.” I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained me. It was _my_ time to assume ascendency. _My_ powers were in play and in force. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave me: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is energy to command well enough, obedience never fails. I mounted to my chamber; locked myself in; fell on my knees; and prayed in my way—a different way to St. John’s, but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet. I rose from the thanksgiving—took a resolve—and lay down, unscared, enlightened—eager but for the daylight. ', 'The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or two with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe, in the order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief absence. Meantime, I heard St. John quit his room. He stopped at my door: I feared he would knock—no, but a slip of paper was passed under the door. I took it up. It bore these words— “You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little longer, you would have laid your hand on the Christian’s cross and the angel’s crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return this day fortnight. Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not into temptation: the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, I see, is weak. I shall pray for you hourly.—Yours, ST. JOHN.” “My spirit,” I answered mentally, “is willing to do what is right; and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven, when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate, it shall be strong enough to search—inquire—to grope an outlet from this cloud of doubt, and find the open day of certainty.” It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly: rain beat fast on my casement. I heard the front-door open, and St. John pass out. Looking through the window, I saw him traverse the garden. He took the way over the misty moors in the direction of Whitcross—there he would meet the coach. “In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin,” thought I: “I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too have some to see and ask after in England, before I depart for ever.” It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the interval in walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which had given my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward sensation I had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in _me_—not in the external world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression—a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas’s prison; it had opened the doors of the soul’s cell and loosed its bands—it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body. “Ere many days,” I said, as I terminated my musings, “I will know something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters have proved of no avail—personal inquiry shall replace them.” At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a journey, and should be absent at least four days. “Alone, Jane?” they asked. “Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for some time been uneasy.” They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they had believed me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I had often said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they abstained from comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was well enough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I replied, that nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon to alleviate. It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled with no inquiries—no surmises. Having once explained to them that I could not now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely acquiesced in the silence with which I pursued them, according to me the privilege of free action I should under similar circumstances have accorded them. I left Moor House at three o’clock P.M., and soon after four I stood at the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival of the coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst the silence of those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great distance. It was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted one summer evening on this very spot—how desolate, and hopeless, and objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I entered—not now obliged to part with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on the road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home. It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from Whitcross on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday morning the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the midst of scenery whose green hedges and large fields and low pastoral hills (how mild of feature and verdant of hue compared with the stern North-Midland moors of Morton!) met my eye like the lineaments of a once familiar face. Yes, I knew the character of this landscape: I was sure we were near my bourne. “How far is Thornfield Hall from here?” I asked of the ostler. “Just two miles, ma’am, across the fields.” “My journey is closed,” I thought to myself. I got out of the coach, gave a box I had into the ostler’s charge, to be kept till I called for it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going: the brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read in gilt letters, “The Rochester Arms.” My heart leapt up: I was already on my master’s very lands. It fell again: the thought struck it:— “Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost your labour—you had better go no farther,” urged the monitor. “Ask information of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek: they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that man, and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home.” The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before me—the very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, on the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what course I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of them. How fast I walked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to catch the first view of the well-known woods! With what feelings I welcomed single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between them! At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing broke the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I hastened. Another field crossed—a lane threaded—and there were the courtyard walls—the back offices: the house itself, the rookery still hid. “My first view of it shall be in front,” I determined, “where its bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can single out my master’s very window: perhaps he will be standing at it—he rises early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in front. Could I but see him!—but a moment! Surely, in that case, I should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell—I am not certain. And if I did—what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me? I rave: perhaps at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or on the tideless sea of the south.” I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard—turned its angle: there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow, between two stone pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar I could peep round quietly at the full front of the mansion. I advanced my head with precaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom window-blinds were yet drawn up: battlements, windows, long front—all from this sheltered station were at my command. The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this survey. I wonder what they thought. They must have considered I was very careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold and reckless. A peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from my niche and a straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in front of the great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it. “What affectation of diffidence was this at first?” they might have demanded; “what stupid regardlessness now?” Hear an illustration, reader. A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses—fancying she has stirred: he withdraws: not for worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty—warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter—by any movement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone dead. I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened ruin. No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed!—to peep up at chamber lattices, fearing life was astir behind them! No need to listen for doors opening—to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk! The lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the portal yawned void. The front was, as I had once seen it in a dream, but a shell-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking, perforated with paneless windows: no roof, no battlements, no chimneys—all had crashed in. And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a lonesome wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here had never received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a church aisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by what fate the Hall had fallen—by conflagration: but how kindled? What story belonged to this disaster? What loss, besides mortar and marble and wood-work had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked as well as property? If so, whose? Dreadful question: there was no one here to answer it—not even dumb sign, mute token. In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late occurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that void arch, winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for, amidst the drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation: grass and weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen rafters. And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck? In what land? Under what auspices? My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey church tower near the gates, and I asked, “Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing the shelter of his narrow marble house?” Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere but at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself brought my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the door and sit down: I had some questions to ask him. But when he complied, I scarcely knew how to begin; such horror had I of the possible answers. And yet the spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery. The host was a respectable-looking, middle-aged man. “You know Thornfield Hall, of course?” I managed to say at last. “Yes, ma’am; I lived there once.” “Did you?” Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me. “I was the late Mr. Rochester’s butler,” he added. The late! I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I had been trying to evade. “The late!” I gasped. “Is he dead?” “I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward’s father,” he explained. I breathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured by these words that Mr. Edward—_my_ Mr. Rochester (God bless him, wherever he was!)—was at least alive: was, in short, “the present gentleman.” Gladdening words! It seemed I could hear all that was to come—whatever the disclosures might be—with comparative tranquillity. Since he was not in the grave, I could bear, I thought, to learn that he was at the Antipodes. “Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?” I asked, knowing, of course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring the direct question as to where he really was. “No, ma’am—oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened last autumn,—Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be saved. The fire broke out at dead of night, and before the engines arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass of flame. It was a terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself.” “At dead of night!” I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour of fatality at Thornfield. “Was it known how it originated?” I demanded. “They guessed, ma’am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware,” he continued, edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, “that there was a lady—a—a lunatic, kept in the house?” “I have heard something of it.” “She was kept in very close confinement, ma’am; people even for some years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw her: they only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture. They said Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad, and some believed she had been his mistress. But a queer thing happened a year since—a very queer thing.” I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to the main fact. “And this lady?” “This lady, ma’am,” he answered, “turned out to be Mr. Rochester’s wife! The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There was a young lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in—” “But the fire,” I suggested. “I’m coming to that, ma’am—that Mr. Edward fell in love with. The servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: he was after her continually. They used to watch him—servants will, you know, ma’am—and he set store on her past everything: for all, nobody but him thought her so very handsome. She was a little small thing, they say, almost like a child. I never saw her myself; but I’ve heard Leah, the house-maid, tell of her. Leah liked her well enough. Mr. Rochester was about forty, and this governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen of his age fall in love with girls, they are often like as if they were bewitched. Well, he would marry her.” “You shall tell me this part of the story another time,” I said; “but now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire. Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had any hand in it?” “You’ve hit it, ma’am: it’s quite certain that it was her, and nobody but her, that set it going. She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs. Poole—an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy, but for one fault—a fault common to a deal of them nurses and matrons—_she kept a private bottle of gin by her_, and now and then took a drop over-much. It is excusable, for she had a hard life of it: but still it was dangerous; for when Mrs. Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water, the mad lady, who was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of her pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house, doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They say she had nearly burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don’t know about that. However, on this night, she set fire first to the hangings of the room next her own, and then she got down to a lower storey, and made her way to the chamber that had been the governess’s—(she was like as if she knew somehow how matters had gone on, and had a spite at her)—and she kindled the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in it, fortunately. The governess had run away two months before; and for all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew savage—quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he got dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and she deserved it—she was a very good woman. Miss Adèle, a ward he had, was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall.” “What! did he not leave England?” “Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones of the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses—which it is my opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he was before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma’am. He was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will of his own, if ever man had. I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my part, I have often wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to Thornfield Hall.” “Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?” “Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And then they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long black hair: we could see it streaming against the flames as she stood. I witnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend through the sky-light on to the roof; we heard him call ‘Bertha!’ We saw him approach her; and then, ma’am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement.” The next minute she lay smashed on the pavement “Dead?” “Dead! Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were scattered.” “Good God!” “You may well say so, ma’am: it was frightful!” He shuddered. “And afterwards?” I urged. “Well, ma’am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there are only some bits of walls standing now.” “Were any other lives lost?” “No—perhaps it would have been better if there had.” “What do you mean?” “Poor Mr. Edward!” he ejaculated, “I little thought ever to have seen it! Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his first marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had one living: but I pity him, for my part.” “You said he was alive?” I exclaimed. “Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead.” “Why? How?” My blood was again running cold. “Where is he?” I demanded. “Is he in England?” “Ay—ay—he’s in England; he can’t get out of England, I fancy—he’s a fixture now.” What agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it. “He is stone-blind,” he said at last. “Yes, he is stone-blind, is Mr. Edward.” I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength to ask what had caused this calamity. “It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a way, ma’am: he wouldn’t leave the house till every one else was out before him. As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs. Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great crash—all fell. He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but sadly hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly; but one eye was knocked out, and one hand so crushed that Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed: he lost the sight of that also. He is now helpless, indeed—blind and a cripple.” “Where is he? Where does he now live?” “At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off: quite a desolate spot.” “Who is with him?” “Old John and his wife: he would have none else. He is quite broken down, they say.” “Have you any sort of conveyance?” “We have a chaise, ma’am, a very handsome chaise.” “Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me to Ferndean before dark this day, I’ll pay both you and him twice the hire you usually demand.” ', 'The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity, moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood. I had heard of it before. Mr. Rochester often spoke of it, and sometimes went there. His father had purchased the estate for the sake of the game covers. He would have let the house, but could find no tenant, in consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious site. Ferndean then remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the exception of some two or three rooms fitted up for the accommodation of the squire when he went there in the season to shoot. To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating rain. The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the chaise and driver with the double remuneration I had promised. Even when within a very short distance of the manor-house, you could see nothing of it, so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about it. Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, and passing through them, I found myself at once in the twilight of close-ranked trees. There was a grass-grown track descending the forest aisle between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches. I followed it, expecting soon to reach the dwelling; but it stretched on and on, it wound far and farther: no sign of habitation or grounds was visible. I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way. The darkness of natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me. I looked round in search of another road. There was none: all was interwoven stem, columnar trunk, dense summer foliage—no opening anywhere. I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently I beheld a railing, then the house—scarce, by this dim light, distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front; the windows were latticed and narrow: the front door was narrow too, one step led up to it. The whole looked, as the host of the Rochester Arms had said, “quite a desolate spot.” It was as still as a church on a week-day: the pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage. “Can there be life here?” I asked. Yes, life of some kind there was; for I heard a movement—that narrow front-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue from the grange. It opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel whether it rained. Dusk as it was, I had recognised him—it was my master, Edward Fairfax Rochester, and no other. I stayed my step, almost my breath, and stood to watch him—to examine him, myself unseen, and alas! to him invisible. It was a sudden meeting, and one in which rapture was kept well in check by pain. I had no difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation, my step from hasty advance. His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever: his port was still erect, his hair was still raven black; nor were his features altered or sunk: not in one year’s space, by any sorrow, could his athletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted. But in his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding—that reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous to approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson. And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity?—if you do, you little know me. A soft hope blent with my sorrow that soon I should dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips so sternly sealed beneath it: but not yet. I would not accost him yet. He descended the one step, and advanced slowly and gropingly towards the grass-plat. Where was his daring stride now? Then he paused, as if he knew not which way to turn. He lifted his hand and opened his eyelids; gazed blank, and with a straining effort, on the sky, and toward the amphitheatre of trees: one saw that all to him was void darkness. He stretched his right hand (the left arm, the mutilated one, he kept hidden in his bosom); he seemed to wish by touch to gain an idea of what lay around him: he met but vacancy still; for the trees were some yards off where he stood. He relinquished the endeavour, folded his arms, and stood quiet and mute in the rain, now falling fast on his uncovered head. At this moment John approached him from some quarter. “Will you take my arm, sir?” he said; “there is a heavy shower coming on: had you not better go in?” “Let me alone,” was the answer. John withdrew without having observed me. Mr. Rochester now tried to walk about: vainly,—all was too uncertain. He groped his way back to the house, and, re-entering it, closed the door. I now drew near and knocked: John’s wife opened for me. “Mary,” I said, “how are you?” She started as if she had seen a ghost: I calmed her. To her hurried “Is it really you, miss, come at this late hour to this lonely place?” I answered by taking her hand; and then I followed her into the kitchen, where John now sat by a good fire. I explained to them, in few words, that I had heard all which had happened since I left Thornfield, and that I was come to see Mr. Rochester. I asked John to go down to the turn-pike-house, where I had dismissed the chaise, and bring my trunk, which I had left there: and then, while I removed my bonnet and shawl, I questioned Mary as to whether I could be accommodated at the Manor House for the night; and finding that arrangements to that effect, though difficult, would not be impossible, I informed her I should stay. Just at this moment the parlour-bell rang. “When you go in,” said I, “tell your master that a person wishes to speak to him, but do not give my name.” “I don’t think he will see you,” she answered; “he refuses everybody.” When she returned, I inquired what he had said. “You are to send in your name and your business,” she replied. She then proceeded to fill a glass with water, and place it on a tray, together with candles. “Is that what he rang for?” I asked. “Yes: he always has candles brought in at dark, though he is blind.” “Give the tray to me; I will carry it in.” I took it from her hand: she pointed me out the parlour door. The tray shook as I held it; the water spilt from the glass; my heart struck my ribs loud and fast. Mary opened the door for me, and shut it behind me. This parlour looked gloomy: a neglected handful of fire burnt low in the grate; and, leaning over it, with his head supported against the high, old-fashioned mantelpiece, appeared the blind tenant of the room. His old dog, Pilot, lay on one side, removed out of the way, and coiled up as if afraid of being inadvertently trodden upon. Pilot pricked up his ears when I came in: then he jumped up with a yelp and a whine, and bounded towards me: he almost knocked the tray from my hands. I set it on the table; then patted him, and said softly, “Lie down!” Mr. Rochester turned mechanically to _see_ what the commotion was: but as he _saw_ nothing, he returned and sighed. “Give me the water, Mary,” he said. I approached him with the now only half-filled glass; Pilot followed me, still excited. “What is the matter?” he inquired. “Down, Pilot!” I again said. He checked the water on its way to his lips, and seemed to listen: he drank, and put the glass down. “This is you, Mary, is it not?” “Mary is in the kitchen,” I answered. He put out his hand with a quick gesture, but not seeing where I stood, he did not touch me. “Who is this? Who is this?” he demanded, trying, as it seemed, to _see_ with those sightless eyes—unavailing and distressing attempt! “Answer me—speak again!” he ordered, imperiously and aloud. “Will you have a little more water, sir? I spilt half of what was in the glass,” I said. “_Who_ is it? _What_ is it? Who speaks?” “Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this evening,” I answered. “Great God!—what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?” “No delusion—no madness: your mind, sir, is too strong for delusion, your health too sound for frenzy.” “And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I _cannot_ see, but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst. Whatever—whoever you are—be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!” He groped; I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine. “Her very fingers!” he cried; “her small, slight fingers! If so there must be more of her.” The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my shoulder—neck—waist—I was entwined and gathered to him. “Is it Jane? _What_ is it? This is her shape—this is her size—” “And this her voice,” I added. “She is all here: her heart, too. God bless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again.” “Jane Eyre!—Jane Eyre,” was all he said. “My dear master,” I answered, “I am Jane Eyre: I have found you out—I am come back to you.” “In truth?—in the flesh? My living Jane?” “You touch me, sir,—you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?” “My living darling! These are certainly her limbs, and these her features; but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery. It is a dream; such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to my heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus—and felt that she loved me, and trusted that she would not leave me.” “Which I never will, sir, from this day.” “Never will, says the vision? But I always woke and found it an empty mockery; and I was desolate and abandoned—my life dark, lonely, hopeless—my soul athirst and forbidden to drink—my heart famished and never to be fed. Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before you go—embrace me, Jane.” “There, sir—and there!”’ I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes—I swept his hair from his brow, and kissed that too. He suddenly seemed to arouse himself: the conviction of the reality of all this seized him. “It is you—is it, Jane? You are come back to me then?” “I am.” “And you do not lie dead in some ditch under some stream? And you are not a pining outcast amongst strangers?” “No, sir! I am an independent woman now.” “Independent! What do you mean, Jane?” “My uncle in Madeira is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds.” “Ah! this is practical—this is real!” he cried: “I should never dream that. Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, so animating and piquant, as well as soft: it cheers my withered heart; it puts life into it.—What, Janet! Are you an independent woman? A rich woman?” “Quite rich, sir. If you won’t let me live with you, I can build a house of my own close up to your door, and you may come and sit in my parlour when you want company of an evening.” “But as you are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who will look after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a blind lameter like me?” “I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own mistress.” “And you will stay with me?” “Certainly—unless you object. I will be your neighbour, your nurse, your housekeeper. I find you lonely: I will be your companion—to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy, my dear master; you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live.” He replied not: he seemed serious—abstracted; he sighed; he half-opened his lips as if to speak: he closed them again. I felt a little embarrassed. Perhaps I had too rashly over-leaped conventionalities; and he, like St. John, saw impropriety in my inconsiderateness. I had indeed made my proposal from the idea that he wished and would ask me to be his wife: an expectation, not the less certain because unexpressed, had buoyed me up, that he would claim me at once as his own. But no hint to that effect escaping him and his countenance becoming more overcast, I suddenly remembered that I might have been all wrong, and was perhaps playing the fool unwittingly; and I began gently to withdraw myself from his arms—but he eagerly snatched me closer. “No—no—Jane; you must not go. No—I have touched you, heard you, felt the comfort of your presence—the sweetness of your consolation: I cannot give up these joys. I have little left in myself—I must have you. The world may laugh—may call me absurd, selfish—but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.” “Well, sir, I will stay with you: I have said so.” “Yes—but you understand one thing by staying with me; and I understand another. You, perhaps, could make up your mind to be about my hand and chair—to wait on me as a kind little nurse (for you have an affectionate heart and a generous spirit, which prompt you to make sacrifices for those you pity), and that ought to suffice for me no doubt. I suppose I should now entertain none but fatherly feelings for you: do you think so? Come—tell me.” “I will think what you like, sir: I am content to be only your nurse, if you think it better.” “But you cannot always be my nurse, Janet: you are young—you must marry one day.” “I don’t care about being married.” “You should care, Janet: if I were what I once was, I would try to make you care—but—a sightless block!” He relapsed again into gloom. I, on the contrary, became more cheerful, and took fresh courage: these last words gave me an insight as to where the difficulty lay; and as it was no difficulty with me, I felt quite relieved from my previous embarrassment. I resumed a livelier vein of conversation. “It is time some one undertook to rehumanise you,” said I, parting his thick and long uncut locks; “for I see you are being metamorphosed into a lion, or something of that sort. You have a ‘faux air’ of Nebuchadnezzar in the fields about you, that is certain: your hair reminds me of eagles’ feathers; whether your nails are grown like birds’ claws or not, I have not yet noticed.” “On this arm, I have neither hand nor nails,” he said, drawing the mutilated limb from his breast, and showing it to me. “It is a mere stump—a ghastly sight! Don’t you think so, Jane?” “It is a pity to see it; and a pity to see your eyes—and the scar of fire on your forehead: and the worst of it is, one is in danger of loving you too well for all this; and making too much of you.” “I thought you would be revolted, Jane, when you saw my arm, and my cicatrised visage.” “Did you? Don’t tell me so—lest I should say something disparaging to your judgment. Now, let me leave you an instant, to make a better fire, and have the hearth swept up. Can you tell when there is a good fire?” “Yes; with the right eye I see a glow—a ruddy haze.” “And you see the candles?” “Very dimly—each is a luminous cloud.” “Can you see me?” “No, my fairy: but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you.” “When do you take supper?” “I never take supper.” “But you shall have some to-night. I am hungry: so are you, I daresay, only you forget.” Summoning Mary, I soon had the room in more cheerful order: I prepared him, likewise, a comfortable repast. My spirits were excited, and with pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, and for a long time after. There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I suited him; all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him. Delightful consciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature: in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine. Blind as he was, smiles played over his face, joy dawned on his forehead: his lineaments softened and warmed. After supper, he began to ask me many questions, of where I had been, what I had been doing, how I had found him out; but I gave him only very partial replies: it was too late to enter into particulars that night. Besides, I wished to touch no deep-thrilling chord—to open no fresh well of emotion in his heart: my sole present aim was to cheer him. Cheered, as I have said, he was: and yet but by fits. If a moment’s silence broke the conversation, he would turn restless, touch me, then say, “Jane.” “You are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that?” You are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that? “I conscientiously believe so, Mr. Rochester.” “Yet how, on this dark and doleful evening, could you so suddenly rise on my lone hearth? I stretched my hand to take a glass of water from a hireling, and it was given me by you: I asked a question, expecting John’s wife to answer me, and your voice spoke at my ear.” “Because I had come in, in Mary’s stead, with the tray.” “And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you. Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for months past? Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in day; feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out, of hunger when I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at times, a very delirium of desire to behold my Jane again. Yes: for her restoration I longed, far more than for that of my lost sight. How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more.” A commonplace, practical reply, out of the train of his own disturbed ideas, was, I was sure, the best and most reassuring for him in this frame of mind. I passed my finger over his eyebrows, and remarked that they were scorched, and that I would apply something which would make them grow as broad and black as ever. “Where is the use of doing me good in any way, beneficent spirit, when, at some fatal moment, you will again desert me—passing like a shadow, whither and how to me unknown, and for me remaining afterwards undiscoverable?” “Have you a pocket-comb about you, sir?” “What for, Jane?” “Just to comb out this shaggy black mane. I find you rather alarming, when I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a fairy, but I am sure, you are more like a brownie.” “Am I hideous, Jane?” “Very, sir: you always were, you know.” “Humph! The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you have sojourned.” “Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred times better people; possessed of ideas and views you never entertained in your life: quite more refined and exalted.” “Who the deuce have you been with?” “If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of your head; and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of my substantiality.” “Who have you been with, Jane?” “You shall not get it out of me to-night, sir; you must wait till to-morrow; to leave my tale half told, will, you know, be a sort of security that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish it. By the bye, I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass of water then: I must bring an egg at the least, to say nothing of fried ham.” “You mocking changeling—fairy-born and human-bred! You make me feel as I have not felt these twelve months. If Saul could have had you for his David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the harp.” “There, sir, you are redd up and made decent. Now I’ll leave you: I have been travelling these last three days, and I believe I am tired. Good night.” “Just one word, Jane: were there only ladies in the house where you have been?” I laughed and made my escape, still laughing as I ran upstairs. “A good idea!” I thought with glee. “I see I have the means of fretting him out of his melancholy for some time to come.” Very early the next morning I heard him up and astir, wandering from one room to another. As soon as Mary came down I heard the question: “Is Miss Eyre here?” Then: “Which room did you put her into? Was it dry? Is she up? Go and ask if she wants anything; and when she will come down.” I came down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast. Entering the room very softly, I had a view of him before he discovered my presence. It was mournful, indeed, to witness the subjugation of that vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity. He sat in his chair—still, but not at rest: expectant evidently; the lines of now habitual sadness marking his strong features. His countenance reminded one of a lamp quenched, waiting to be re-lit—and alas! it was not himself that could now kindle the lustre of animated expression: he was dependent on another for that office! I had meant to be gay and careless, but the powerlessness of the strong man touched my heart to the quick: still I accosted him with what vivacity I could. “It is a bright, sunny morning, sir,” I said. “The rain is over and gone, and there is a tender shining after it: you shall have a walk soon.” I had wakened the glow: his features beamed. “Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone: not vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane’s tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence.” The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor. But I would not be lachrymose: I dashed off the salt drops, and busied myself with preparing breakfast. Most of the morning was spent in the open air. I led him out of the wet and wild wood into some cheerful fields: I described to him how brilliantly green they were; how the flowers and hedges looked refreshed; how sparklingly blue was the sky. I sought a seat for him in a hidden and lovely spot, a dry stump of a tree; nor did I refuse to let him, when seated, place me on his knee. Why should I, when both he and I were happier near than apart? Pilot lay beside us: all was quiet. He broke out suddenly while clasping me in his arms— “Cruel, cruel deserter! Oh, Jane, what did I feel when I discovered you had fled from Thornfield, and when I could nowhere find you; and, after examining your apartment, ascertained that you had taken no money, nor anything which could serve as an equivalent! A pearl necklace I had given you lay untouched in its little casket; your trunks were left corded and locked as they had been prepared for the bridal tour. What could my darling do, I asked, left destitute and penniless? And what did she do? Let me hear now.” Thus urged, I began the narrative of my experience for the last year. I softened considerably what related to the three days of wandering and starvation, because to have told him all would have been to inflict unnecessary pain: the little I did say lacerated his faithful heart deeper than I wished. I should not have left him thus, he said, without any means of making my way: I should have told him my intention. I should have confided in him: he would never have forced me to be his mistress. Violent as he had seemed in his despair, he, in truth, loved me far too well and too tenderly to constitute himself my tyrant: he would have given me half his fortune, without demanding so much as a kiss in return, rather than I should have flung myself friendless on the wide world. I had endured, he was certain, more than I had confessed to him. “Well, whatever my sufferings had been, they were very short,” I answered: and then I proceeded to tell him how I had been received at Moor House; how I had obtained the office of schoolmistress, &c. The accession of fortune, the discovery of my relations, followed in due order. Of course, St. John Rivers’ name came in frequently in the progress of my tale. When I had done, that name was immediately taken up. “This St. John, then, is your cousin?” “Yes.” “You have spoken of him often: do you like him?” “He was a very good man, sir; I could not help liking him.” “A good man. Does that mean a respectable well-conducted man of fifty? Or what does it mean?” “St John was only twenty-nine, sir.” “‘_Jeune encore_,’ as the French say. Is he a person of low stature, phlegmatic, and plain? A person whose goodness consists rather in his guiltlessness of vice, than in his prowess in virtue.” “He is untiringly active. Great and exalted deeds are what he lives to perform.” “But his brain? That is probably rather soft? He means well: but you shrug your shoulders to hear him talk?” “He talks little, sir: what he does say is ever to the point. His brain is first-rate, I should think not impressible, but vigorous.” “Is he an able man, then?” “Truly able.” “A thoroughly educated man?” “St. John is an accomplished and profound scholar.” “His manners, I think, you said are not to your taste?—priggish and parsonic?” “I never mentioned his manners; but, unless I had a very bad taste, they must suit it; they are polished, calm, and gentlemanlike.” “His appearance,—I forget what description you gave of his appearance;—a sort of raw curate, half strangled with his white neckcloth, and stilted up on his thick-soled high-lows, eh?” “St. John dresses well. He is a handsome man: tall, fair, with blue eyes, and a Grecian profile.” (Aside.) “Damn him!”—(To me.) “Did you like him, Jane?” “Yes, Mr. Rochester, I liked him: but you asked me that before.” I perceived, of course, the drift of my interlocutor. Jealousy had got hold of him: she stung him; but the sting was salutary: it gave him respite from the gnawing fang of melancholy. I would not, therefore, immediately charm the snake. “Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee, Miss Eyre?” was the next somewhat unexpected observation. “Why not, Mr. Rochester?” “The picture you have just drawn is suggestive of a rather too overwhelming contrast. Your words have delineated very prettily a graceful Apollo: he is present to your imagination,—tall, fair, blue-eyed, and with a Grecian profile. Your eyes dwell on a Vulcan,—a real blacksmith, brown, broad-shouldered: and blind and lame into the bargain.” “I never thought of it, before; but you certainly are rather like Vulcan, sir.” “Well, you can leave me, ma’am: but before you go” (and he retained me by a firmer grasp than ever), “you will be pleased just to answer me a question or two.” He paused. “What questions, Mr. Rochester?” Then followed this cross-examination. “St. John made you schoolmistress of Morton before he knew you were his cousin?” “Yes.” “You would often see him? He would visit the school sometimes?” “Daily.” “He would approve of your plans, Jane? I know they would be clever, for you are a talented creature!” “He approved of them—yes.” “He would discover many things in you he could not have expected to find? Some of your accomplishments are not ordinary.” “I don’t know about that.” “You had a little cottage near the school, you say: did he ever come there to see you?” “Now and then.” “Of an evening?” “Once or twice.” A pause. “How long did you reside with him and his sisters after the cousinship was discovered?” “Five months.” “Did Rivers spend much time with the ladies of his family?” “Yes; the back parlour was both his study and ours: he sat near the window, and we by the table.” “Did he study much?” “A good deal.” “What?” “Hindostanee.” “And what did you do meantime?” “I learnt German, at first.” “Did he teach you?” “He did not understand German.” “Did he teach you nothing?” “A little Hindostanee.” “Rivers taught you Hindostanee?” “Yes, sir.” “And his sisters also?” “No.” “Only you?” “Only me.” “Did you ask to learn?” “No.” “He wished to teach you?” “Yes.” A second pause. “Why did he wish it? Of what use could Hindostanee be to you?” “He intended me to go with him to India.” “Ah! here I reach the root of the matter. He wanted you to marry him?” “He asked me to marry him.” “That is a fiction—an impudent invention to vex me.” “I beg your pardon, it is the literal truth: he asked me more than once, and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could be.” “Miss Eyre, I repeat it, you can leave me. How often am I to say the same thing? Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee, when I have given you notice to quit?” “Because I am comfortable there.” “No, Jane, you are not comfortable there, because your heart is not with me: it is with this cousin—this St. John. Oh, till this moment, I thought my little Jane was all mine! I had a belief she loved me even when she left me: that was an atom of sweet in much bitter. Long as we have been parted, hot tears as I have wept over our separation, I never thought that while I was mourning her, she was loving another! But it is useless grieving. Jane, leave me: go and marry Rivers.” “Shake me off, then, sir,—push me away, for I’ll not leave you of my own accord.” “Jane, I ever like your tone of voice: it still renews hope, it sounds so truthful. When I hear it, it carries me back a year. I forget that you have formed a new tie. But I am not a fool—go—” “Where must I go, sir?” “Your own way—with the husband you have chosen.” “Who is that?” “You know—this St. John Rivers.” “He is not my husband, nor ever will be. He does not love me: I do not love him. He loves (as he _can_ love, and that is not as you love) a beautiful young lady called Rosamond. He wanted to marry me only because he thought I should make a suitable missionary’s wife, which she would not have done. He is good and great, but severe; and, for me, cold as an iceberg. He is not like you, sir: I am not happy at his side, nor near him, nor with him. He has no indulgence for me—no fondness. He sees nothing attractive in me; not even youth—only a few useful mental points.—Then I must leave you, sir, to go to him?” I shuddered involuntarily, and clung instinctively closer to my blind but beloved master. He smiled. “What, Jane! Is this true? Is such really the state of matters between you and Rivers?” “Absolutely, sir! Oh, you need not be jealous! I wanted to tease you a little to make you less sad: I thought anger would be better than grief. But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much I _do_ love you, you would be proud and content. All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence for ever.” Again, as he kissed me, painful thoughts darkened his aspect. “My seared vision! My crippled strength!” he murmured regretfully. I caressed, in order to soothe him. I knew of what he was thinking, and wanted to speak for him, but dared not. As he turned aside his face a minute, I saw a tear slide from under the sealed eyelid, and trickle down the manly cheek. My heart swelled. “I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchard,” he remarked ere long. “And what right would that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?” “You are no ruin, sir—no lightning-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop.” Again he smiled: I gave him comfort. “You speak of friends, Jane?” he asked. “Yes, of friends,” I answered rather hesitatingly: for I knew I meant more than friends, but could not tell what other word to employ. He helped me. “Ah! Jane. But I want a wife.” “Do you, sir?” “Yes: is it news to you?” “Of course: you said nothing about it before.” “Is it unwelcome news?” “That depends on circumstances, sir—on your choice.” “Which you shall make for me, Jane. I will abide by your decision.” “Choose then, sir—_her who loves you best_.” “I will at least choose—_her I love best_. Jane, will you marry me?” “Yes, sir.” “A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?” “Yes, sir.” “A crippled man, twenty years older than you, whom you will have to wait on?” “Yes, sir.” “Truly, Jane?” “Most truly, sir.” “Oh! my darling! God bless you and reward you!” “Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life—if ever I thought a good thought—if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer—if ever I wished a righteous wish,—I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth.” “Because you delight in sacrifice.” “Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value—to press my lips to what I love—to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice.” “And to bear with my infirmities, Jane: to overlook my deficiencies.” “Which are none, sir, to me. I love you better now, when I can really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector.” “Hitherto I have hated to be helped—to be led: henceforth, I feel I shall hate it no more. I did not like to put my hand into a hireling’s, but it is pleasant to feel it circled by Jane’s little fingers. I preferred utter loneliness to the constant attendance of servants; but Jane’s soft ministry will be a perpetual joy. Jane suits me: do I suit her?” “To the finest fibre of my nature, sir.” “The case being so, we have nothing in the world to wait for: we must be married instantly.” He looked and spoke with eagerness: his old impetuosity was rising. “We must become one flesh without any delay, Jane: there is but the licence to get—then we marry.” “Mr. Rochester, I have just discovered the sun is far declined from its meridian, and Pilot is actually gone home to his dinner. Let me look at your watch.” “Fasten it into your girdle, Janet, and keep it henceforward: I have no use for it.” “It is nearly four o’clock in the afternoon, sir. Don’t you feel hungry?” “The third day from this must be our wedding-day, Jane. Never mind fine clothes and jewels, now: all that is not worth a fillip.” “The sun has dried up all the rain-drops, sir. The breeze is still: it is quite hot.” “Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this moment fastened round my bronze scrag under my cravat? I have worn it since the day I lost my only treasure, as a memento of her.” “We will go home through the wood: that will be the shadiest way.” He pursued his own thoughts without heeding me. “Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower—breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. _His_ chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane—only—only of late—I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere. “Some days since: nay, I can number them—four; it was last Monday night, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy—sorrow, sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I could nowhere find you, you must be dead. Late that night—perhaps it might be between eleven and twelve o’clock—ere I retired to my dreary rest, I supplicated God, that, if it seemed good to Him, I might soon be taken from this life, and admitted to that world to come, where there was still hope of rejoining Jane. “I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon. I longed for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged—that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart’s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words—‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’” “Did you speak these words aloud?” “I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me mad: I pronounced them with such frantic energy.” “And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?” “Yes; but the time is of no consequence: what followed is the strange point. You will think me superstitious,—some superstition I have in my blood, and always had: nevertheless, this is true—true at least it is that I heard what I now relate. “As I exclaimed ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ a voice—I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was—replied, ‘I am coming: wait for me;’ and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words—‘Where are you?’ “I’ll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to my mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls dull, and dies unreverberating. ‘Where are you?’ seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine; for those were your accents—as certain as I live—they were yours!” Reader, it was on Monday night—near midnight—that I too had received the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to it. I listened to Mr. Rochester’s narrative, but made no disclosure in return. The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be communicated or discussed. If I told anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer: and that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural. I kept these things then, and pondered them in my heart. “You cannot now wonder,” continued my master, “that when you rose upon me so unexpectedly last night, I had difficulty in believing you any other than a mere voice and vision, something that would melt to silence and annihilation, as the midnight whisper and mountain echo had melted before. Now, I thank God! I know it to be otherwise. Yes, I thank God!” He put me off his knee, rose, and reverently lifting his hat from his brow, and bending his sightless eyes to the earth, he stood in mute devotion. Only the last words of the worship were audible. “I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto!” Then he stretched his hand out to be led. I took that dear hand, held it a moment to my lips, then let it pass round my shoulder: being so much lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop and guide. We entered the wood, and wended homeward. ', 'Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went into the kitchen of the manor-house, where Mary was cooking the dinner and John cleaning the knives, and I said— “Mary, I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning.” The housekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic order of people, to whom one may at any time safely communicate a remarkable piece of news without incurring the danger of having one’s ears pierced by some shrill ejaculation, and subsequently stunned by a torrent of wordy wonderment. Mary did look up, and she did stare at me: the ladle with which she was basting a pair of chickens roasting at the fire, did for some three minutes hang suspended in air; and for the same space of time John’s knives also had rest from the polishing process: but Mary, bending again over the roast, said only— “Have you, Miss? Well, for sure!” A short time after she pursued—“I seed you go out with the master, but I didn’t know you were gone to church to be wed;” and she basted away. John, when I turned to him, was grinning from ear to ear. “I telled Mary how it would be,” he said: “I knew what Mr. Edward” (John was an old servant, and had known his master when he was the cadet of the house, therefore, he often gave him his Christian name)—“I knew what Mr. Edward would do; and I was certain he would not wait long neither: and he’s done right, for aught I know. I wish you joy, Miss!” and he politely pulled his forelock. “Thank you, John. Mr. Rochester told me to give you and Mary this.” I put into his hand a five-pound note. Without waiting to hear more, I left the kitchen. In passing the door of that sanctum some time after, I caught the words— “She’ll happen do better for him nor ony o’ t’ grand ladies.” And again, “If she ben’t one o’ th’ handsomest, she’s noan faâl and varry good-natured; and i’ his een she’s fair beautiful, onybody may see that.” I wrote to Moor House and to Cambridge immediately, to say what I had done: fully explaining also why I had thus acted. Diana and Mary approved the step unreservedly. Diana announced that she would just give me time to get over the honeymoon, and then she would come and see me. “She had better not wait till then, Jane,” said Mr. Rochester, when I read her letter to him; “if she does, she will be too late, for our honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.” How St. John received the news, I don’t know: he never answered the letter in which I communicated it: yet six months after he wrote to me, without, however, mentioning Mr. Rochester’s name or alluding to my marriage. His letter was then calm, and, though very serious, kind. He has maintained a regular, though not frequent, correspondence ever since: he hopes I am happy, and trusts I am not of those who live without God in the world, and only mind earthly things. You have not quite forgotten little Adèle, have you, reader? I had not; I soon asked and obtained leave of Mr. Rochester, to go and see her at the school where he had placed her. Her frantic joy at beholding me again moved me much. She looked pale and thin: she said she was not happy. I found the rules of the establishment were too strict, its course of study too severe for a child of her age: I took her home with me. I meant to become her governess once more, but I soon found this impracticable; my time and cares were now required by another—my husband needed them all. So I sought out a school conducted on a more indulgent system, and near enough to permit of my visiting her often, and bringing her home sometimes. I took care she should never want for anything that could contribute to her comfort: she soon settled in her new abode, became very happy there, and made fair progress in her studies. As she grew up, a sound English education corrected in a great measure her French defects; and when she left school, I found in her a pleasing and obliging companion: docile, good-tempered, and well-principled. By her grateful attention to me and mine, she has long since well repaid any little kindness I ever had it in my power to offer her. My tale draws to its close: one word respecting my experience of married life, and one brief glance at the fortunes of those whose names have most frequently recurred in this narrative, and I have done. I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest—blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward’s society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character—perfect concord is the result. Mr. Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union; perhaps it was that circumstance that drew us so very near—that knit us so very close: for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand. Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of his eye. He saw nature—he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect of field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam—of the landscape before us; of the weather round us—and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye. Never did I weary of reading to him; never did I weary of conducting him where he wished to go: of doing for him what he wished to be done. And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most exquisite, even though sad—because he claimed these services without painful shame or damping humiliation. He loved me so truly, that he knew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance: he felt I loved him so fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes. One morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a letter to his dictation, he came and bent over me, and said—“Jane, have you a glittering ornament round your neck?” I had a gold watch-chain: I answered “Yes.” “And have you a pale blue dress on?” And have you a pale blue dress on? I had. He informed me then, that for some time he had fancied the obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and that now he was sure of it. He and I went up to London. He had the advice of an eminent oculist; and he eventually recovered the sight of that one eye. He cannot now see very distinctly: he cannot read or write much; but he can find his way without being led by the hand: the sky is no longer a blank to him—the earth no longer a void. When his first-born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were—large, brilliant, and black. On that occasion, he again, with a full heart, acknowledged that God had tempered judgment with mercy. My Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we most love are happy likewise. Diana and Mary Rivers are both married: alternately, once every year, they come to see us, and we go to see them. Diana’s husband is a captain in the navy, a gallant officer and a good man. Mary’s is a clergyman, a college friend of her brother’s, and, from his attainments and principles, worthy of the connection. Both Captain Fitzjames and Mr. Wharton love their wives, and are loved by them. As to St. John Rivers, he left England: he went to India. He entered on the path he had marked for himself; he pursues it still. A more resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks and dangers. Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy, and zeal, and truth, he labours for his race; he clears their painful way to improvement; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says—“Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.” His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth—who stand without fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty victories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful. St. John is unmarried: he never will marry now. Himself has hitherto sufficed to the toil, and the toil draws near its close: his glorious sun hastens to its setting. The last letter I received from him drew from my eyes human tears, and yet filled my heart with divine joy: he anticipated his sure reward, his incorruptible crown. I know that a stranger’s hand will write to me next, to say that the good and faithful servant has been called at length into the joy of his Lord. And why weep for this? No fear of death will darken St. John’s last hour: his mind will be unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope will be sure, his faith steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this— “My Master,” he says, “has forewarned me. Daily He announces more distinctly,—‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly respond,—‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!’” *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANE EYRE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY ***      Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. 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['There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering indeed in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning but since dinner Mrs Reed when there was no company dined early the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre and a rain so penetrating that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question. I was glad of it I never liked long walks especially on chilly afternoons dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight with nipped fingers and toes and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie the nurse and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza John and Georgiana Reed. The said Eliza John and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside and with her darlings about her for the time neither quarrelling nor crying looked perfectly happy. Me she had dispensed from joining the group saying She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance but that until she heard from Bessie and could discover by her own observation that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition a more attractive and sprightly manner—something lighter franker more natural as it were—she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented happy little children. What does Bessie say I have done? I asked. Jane I don’t like cavillers or questioners besides there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere and until you can speak pleasantly remain silent. A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase I soon possessed myself of a volume taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat gathering up my feet I sat cross-legged like a Turk and having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close I was shrined in double retirement. Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand to the left were the clear panes of glass protecting but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals while turning over the leaves of my book I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. I returned to my book—Bewick’s History of British Birds the letterpress thereof I cared little for generally speaking and yet there were certain introductory pages that child as I was I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl of the solitary rocks and promontories by them only inhabited of the coast of Norway studded with isles from its southern extremity the Lindeness or Naze to the North Cape— Where the Northern Ocean in vast whirls Boils round the naked melancholy isles Of farthest Thule and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides. Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland Siberia Spitzbergen Nova Zembla Iceland Greenland with the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone and those forlorn regions of dreary space—that reservoir of frost and snow where firm fields of ice the accumulation of centuries of winters glazed in Alpine heights above heights surround the pole and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold. Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own shadowy like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children’s brains but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking. I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard with its inscribed headstone its gate its two trees its low horizon girdled by a broken wall and its newly-risen crescent attesting the hour of eventide. The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea I believed to be marine phantoms. The fiend pinning down the thief’s pack behind him I passed over quickly it was an object of terror. So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows. Each picture told a story mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings yet ever profoundly interesting as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings when she chanced to be in good humour and when having brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth she allowed us to sit about it and while she got up Mrs Reed’s lace frills and crimped her nightcap borders fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads or as at a later period I discovered from the pages of Pamela and Henry Earl of Moreland. With Bewick on my knee I was then happy happy at least in my way. I feared nothing but interruption and that came too soon. The breakfast-room door opened. Boh! Madam Mope! cried the voice of John Reed then he paused he found the room apparently empty. Where the dickens is she! he continued. Lizzy! Georgy! calling to his sisters Joan is not here tell mama she is run out into the rain—bad animal! It is well I drew the curtain thought I and I wished fervently he might not discover my hiding-place nor would John Reed have found it out himself he was not quick either of vision or conception but Eliza just put her head in at the door and said at once— She is in the window-seat to be sure Jack. And I came out immediately for I trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Jack. What do you want? I asked with awkward diffidence. Say ‘What do you want Master Reed?’ was the answer. I want you to come here and seating himself in an arm-chair he intimated by a gesture that I was to approach and stand before him. John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old four years older than I for I was but ten large and stout for his age with a dingy and unwholesome skin thick lineaments in a spacious visage heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at table which made him bilious and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now to have been at school but his mama had taken him home for a month or two on account of his delicate health. Mr Miles the master affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home but the mother’s heart turned from an opinion so harsh and inclined rather to the more refined idea that John’s sallowness was owing to over-application and perhaps to pining after home. John had not much affection for his mother and sisters and an antipathy to me. He bullied and punished me not two or three times in the week nor once or twice in the day but continually every nerve I had feared him and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions the servants did not like to offend their young master by taking my part against him and Mrs Reed was blind and deaf on the subject she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me though he did both now and then in her very presence more frequently however behind her back. Habitually obedient to John I came up to his chair he spent some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without damaging the roots I knew he would soon strike and while dreading the blow I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently deal it. I wonder if he read that notion in my face for all at once without speaking he struck suddenly and strongly. I tottered and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair. That is for your impudence in answering mama awhile since said he and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains and for the look you had in your eyes two minutes since you rat! Accustomed to John Reed’s abuse I never had an idea of replying to it my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult. What were you doing behind the curtain? he asked. I was reading. Show the book. I returned to the window and fetched it thence. You have no business to take our books you are a dependent mama says you have no money your father left you none you ought to beg and not to live here with gentlemen’s children like us and eat the same meals we do and wear clothes at our mama’s expense. Now I’ll teach you to rummage my bookshelves for they are mine all the house belongs to me or will do in a few years. Go and stand by the door out of the way of the mirror and the windows. I did so not at first aware what was his intention but when I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it I instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm not soon enough however the volume was flung it hit me and I fell striking my head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled the pain was sharp my terror had passed its climax other feelings succeeded. Wicked and cruel boy! I said. You are like a murderer—you are like a slave-driver—you are like the Roman emperors! I had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome and had formed my opinion of Nero Caligula &c. Also I had drawn parallels in silence which I never thought thus to have declared aloud. What! what! he cried. Did she say that to me? Did you hear her Eliza and Georgiana? Won’t I tell mama? but first— He ran headlong at me I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder he had closed with a desperate thing. I really saw in him a tyrant a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering these sensations for the time predominated over fear and I received him in frantic sort. I don’t very well know what I did with my hands but he called me Rat! Rat! and bellowed out aloud. Aid was near him Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs Reed who was gone upstairs she now came upon the scene followed by Bessie and her maid Abbot. We were parted I heard the words— Dear! dear! What a fury to fly at Master John! Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion! Then Mrs Reed subjoined— Take her away to the red-room and lock her in there. Four hands were immediately laid upon me and I was borne upstairs. ', 'I resisted all the way a new thing for me and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were disposed to entertain of me. The fact is I was a trifle beside myself or rather out of myself as the French would say I was conscious that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties and like any other rebel slave I felt resolved in my desperation to go all lengths. Hold her arms Miss Abbot she’s like a mad cat. For shame! for shame! cried the lady’s-maid. What shocking conduct Miss Eyre to strike a young gentleman your benefactress’s son! Your young master. Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant? No you are less than a servant for you do nothing for your keep. There sit down and think over your wickedness. They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs Reed and had thrust me upon a stool my impulse was to rise from it like a spring their two pair of hands arrested me instantly. If you don’t sit still you must be tied down said Bessie. Miss Abbot lend me your garters she would break mine directly. Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature. This preparation for bonds and the additional ignominy it inferred took a little of the excitement out of me. Don’t take them off I cried I will not stir. In guarantee whereof I attached myself to my seat by my hands. Mind you don’t said Bessie and when she had ascertained that I was really subsiding she loosened her hold of me then she and Miss Abbot stood with folded arms looking darkly and doubtfully on my face as incredulous of my sanity. She never did so before at last said Bessie turning to the Abigail. But it was always in her was the reply. I’ve told Missis often my opinion about the child and Missis agreed with me. She’s an underhand little thing I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover. Bessie answered not but ere long addressing me she said— You ought to be aware Miss that you are under obligations to Mrs Reed she keeps you if she were to turn you off you would have to go to the poorhouse. I had nothing to say to these words they were not new to me my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear very painful and crushing but only half intelligible. Miss Abbot joined in— And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money and you will have none it is your place to be humble and to try to make yourself agreeable to them. What we tell you is for your good added Bessie in no harsh voice you should try to be useful and pleasant then perhaps you would have a home here but if you become passionate and rude Missis will send you away I am sure. Besides said Miss Abbot God will punish her He might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums and then where would she go? Come Bessie we will leave her I wouldn’t have her heart for anything. Say your prayers Miss Eyre when you are by yourself for if you don’t repent something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away. They went shutting the door and locking it behind them. The red-room was a square chamber very seldom slept in I might say never indeed unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany hung with curtains of deep red damask stood out like a tabernacle in the centre the two large windows with their blinds always drawn down were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery the carpet was red the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it the wardrobe the toilet-table the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high and glared white the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed also white with a footstool before it and looking as I thought like a pale throne. This room was chill because it seldom had a fire it was silent because remote from the nursery and kitchen solemn because it was known to be so seldom entered. The house-maid alone came here on Saturdays to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week’s quiet dust and Mrs Reed herself at far intervals visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe where were stored divers parchments her jewel-casket and a miniature of her deceased husband and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room—the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur. Mr Reed had been dead nine years it was in this chamber he breathed his last here he lay in state hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker’s men and since that day a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion. My seat to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece the bed rose before me to my right hand there was the high dark wardrobe with subdued broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels to my left were the muffled windows a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room. I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door and when I dared move I got up and went to see. Alas! yes no jail was ever more secure. Returning I had to cross before the looking-glass my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality and the strange little figure there gazing at me with a white face and arms specking the gloom and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still had the effect of a real spirit I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms half fairy half imp Bessie’s evening stories represented as coming out of lone ferny dells in moors and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers. I returned to my stool. Superstition was with me at that moment but it was not yet her hour for complete victory my blood was still warm the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present. All John Reed’s violent tyrannies all his sisters’ proud indifference all his mother’s aversion all the servants’ partiality turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering always browbeaten always accused for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favour? Eliza who was headstrong and selfish was respected. Georgiana who had a spoiled temper a very acrid spite a captious and insolent carriage was universally indulged. Her beauty her pink cheeks and golden curls seemed to give delight to all who looked at her and to purchase indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted much less punished though he twisted the necks of the pigeons killed the little pea-chicks set the dogs at the sheep stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory he called his mother old girl too sometimes reviled her for her dark skin similar to his own bluntly disregarded her wishes not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire and he was still her own darling. I dared commit no fault I strove to fulfil every duty and I was termed naughty and tiresome sullen and sneaking from morning to noon and from noon to night. My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received no one had reproved John for wantonly striking me and because I had turned against him to avert farther irrational violence I was loaded with general opprobrium. Unjust!—unjust! said my reason forced by the agonising stimulus into precocious though transitory power and Resolve equally wrought up instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression—as running away or if that could not be effected never eating or drinking more and letting myself die. What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How all my brain was in tumult and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness what dense ignorance was the mental battle fought! I could not answer the ceaseless inward question—why I thus suffered now at the distance of—I will not say how many years I see it clearly. I was a discord in Gateshead Hall I was like nobody there I had nothing in harmony with Mrs Reed or her children or her chosen vassalage. If they did not love me in fact as little did I love them. They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one amongst them a heterogeneous thing opposed to them in temperament in capacity in propensities a useless thing incapable of serving their interest or adding to their pleasure a noxious thing cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment of contempt of their judgment. I know that had I been a sanguine brilliant careless exacting handsome romping child—though equally dependent and friendless—Mrs Reed would have endured my presence more complacently her children would have entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling the servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery. Daylight began to forsake the red-room it was past four o’clock and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heard the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall I grew by degrees cold as a stone and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation self-doubt forlorn depression fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire. All said I was wicked and perhaps I might be so what thought had I been but just conceiving of starving myself to death? That certainly was a crime and was I fit to die? Or was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting bourne? In such vault I had been told did Mr Reed lie buried and led by this thought to recall his idea I dwelt on it with gathering dread. I could not remember him but I knew that he was my own uncle—my mother’s brother—that he had taken me when a parentless infant to his house and that in his last moments he had required a promise of Mrs Reed that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children. Mrs Reed probably considered she had kept this promise and so she had I dare say as well as her nature would permit her but how could she really like an interloper not of her race and unconnected with her after her husband’s death by any tie? It must have been most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could not love and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group. A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not—never doubted—that if Mr Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly and now as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls—occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaming mirror—I began to recall what I had heard of dead men troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed and I thought Mr Reed’s spirit harassed by the wrongs of his sister’s child might quit its abode—whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed—and rise before me in this chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me or elicit from the gloom some haloed face bending over me with strange pity. This idea consolatory in theory I felt would be terrible if realised with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it—I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from my eyes I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it I asked myself a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No moonlight was still and this stirred while I gazed it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was in all likelihood a gleam from a lantern carried by some one across the lawn but then prepared as my mind was for horror shaken as my nerves were by agitation I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick my head grew hot a sound filled my ears which I deemed the rushing of wings something seemed near me I was oppressed suffocated endurance broke down I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage the key turned Bessie and Abbot entered. Miss Eyre are you ill? said Bessie. What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me! exclaimed Abbot. Take me out! Let me go into the nursery! was my cry. What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something? again demanded Bessie. Oh! I saw a light and I thought a ghost would come. I had now got hold of Bessie’s hand and she did not snatch it from me. She has screamed out on purpose declared Abbot in some disgust. And what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have excused it but she only wanted to bring us all here I know her naughty tricks. What is all this? demanded another voice peremptorily and Mrs Reed came along the corridor her cap flying wide her gown rustling stormily. Abbot and Bessie I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre should be left in the red-room till I came to her myself. Miss Jane screamed so loud ma’am pleaded Bessie. Let her go was the only answer. Loose Bessie’s hand child you cannot succeed in getting out by these means be assured. I abhor artifice particularly in children it is my duty to show you that tricks will not answer you will now stay here an hour longer and it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you then. O aunt! have pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it—let me be punished some other way! I shall be killed if— Silence! This violence is all most repulsive and so no doubt she felt it. I was a precocious actress in her eyes she sincerely looked on me as a compound of virulent passions mean spirit and dangerous duplicity. Bessie and Abbot having retreated Mrs Reed impatient of my now frantic anguish and wild sobs abruptly thrust me back and locked me in without farther parley. I heard her sweeping away and soon after she was gone I suppose I had a species of fit unconsciousness closed the scene. ', 'The next thing I remember is waking up with a feeling as if I had had a frightful nightmare and seeing before me a terrible red glare crossed with thick black bars. I heard voices too speaking with a hollow sound and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water agitation uncertainty and an all-predominating sense of terror confused my faculties. Ere long I became aware that some one was handling me lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture and that more tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before. I rested my head against a pillow or an arm and felt easy. In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved I knew quite well that I was in my own bed and that the red glare was the nursery fire. It was night a candle burnt on the table Bessie stood at the bed-foot with a basin in her hand and a gentleman sat in a chair near my pillow leaning over me. I felt an inexpressible relief a soothing conviction of protection and security when I knew that there was a stranger in the room an individual not belonging to Gateshead and not related to Mrs Reed. Turning from Bessie though her presence was far less obnoxious to me than that of Abbot for instance would have been I scrutinised the face of the gentleman I knew him it was Mr Lloyd an apothecary sometimes called in by Mrs Reed when the servants were ailing for herself and the children she employed a physician. Well who am I? he asked. I pronounced his name offering him at the same time my hand he took it smiling and saying We shall do very well by-and-by. Then he laid me down and addressing Bessie charged her to be very careful that I was not disturbed during the night. Having given some further directions and intimated that he should call again the next day he departed to my grief I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat in the chair near my pillow and as he closed the door after him all the room darkened and my heart again sank inexpressible sadness weighed it down. Do you feel as if you should sleep Miss? asked Bessie rather softly. Scarcely dared I answer her for I feared the next sentence might be rough. I will try. Would you like to drink or could you eat anything? No thank you Bessie. Then I think I shall go to bed for it is past twelve o’clock but you may call me if you want anything in the night. Wonderful civility this! It emboldened me to ask a question. Bessie what is the matter with me? Am I ill? You fell sick I suppose in the red-room with crying you’ll be better soon no doubt. Bessie went into the housemaid’s apartment which was near. I heard her say— Sarah come and sleep with me in the nursery I daren’t for my life be alone with that poor child to-night she might die it’s such a strange thing she should have that fit I wonder if she saw anything. Missis was rather too hard. Sarah came back with her they both went to bed they were whispering together for half-an-hour before they fell asleep. I caught scraps of their conversation from which I was able only too distinctly to infer the main subject discussed. Something passed her all dressed in white and vanished—A great black dog behind him—Three loud raps on the chamber door—A light in the churchyard just over his grave &c. &c. At last both slept the fire and the candle went out. For me the watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness ear eye and mind were alike strained by dread such dread as children only can feel. No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the reverberation to this day. Yes Mrs Reed to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering but I ought to forgive you for you knew not what you did while rending my heart-strings you thought you were only uprooting my bad propensities. Next day by noon I was up and dressed and sat wrapped in a shawl by the nursery hearth. I felt physically weak and broken down but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears no sooner had I wiped one salt drop from my cheek than another followed. Yet I thought I ought to have been happy for none of the Reeds were there they were all gone out in the carriage with their mama. Abbot too was sewing in another room and Bessie as she moved hither and thither putting away toys and arranging drawers addressed to me every now and then a word of unwonted kindness. This state of things should have been to me a paradise of peace accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging but in fact my racked nerves were now in such a state that no calm could soothe and no pleasure excite them agreeably. Bessie had been down into the kitchen and she brought up with her a tart on a certain brightly painted china plate whose bird of paradise nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds had been wont to stir in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration and which plate I had often petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine it more closely but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a privilege. This precious vessel was now placed on my knee and I was cordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate pastry upon it. Vain favour! coming like most other favours long deferred and often wished for too late! I could not eat the tart and the plumage of the bird the tints of the flowers seemed strangely faded I put both plate and tart away. Bessie asked if I would have a book the word book acted as a transient stimulus and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels from the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight. I considered it a narrative of facts and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales for as to the elves having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth that they were all gone out of England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker and the population more scant whereas Lilliput and Brobdignag being in my creed solid parts of the earth’s surface I doubted not that I might one day by taking a long voyage see with my own eyes the little fields houses and trees the diminutive people the tiny cows sheep and birds of the one realm and the corn-fields forest-high the mighty mastiffs the monster cats the tower-like men and women of the other. Yet when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I turned over its leaves and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had till now never failed to find—all was eerie and dreary the giants were gaunt goblins the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed the book which I dared no longer peruse and put it on the table beside the untasted tart. Bessie had now finished dusting and tidying the room and having washed her hands she opened a certain little drawer full of splendid shreds of silk and satin and began making a new bonnet for Georgiana’s doll. Meantime she sang her song was— In the days when we went gipsying     A long time ago. I had often heard the song before and always with lively delight for Bessie had a sweet voice—at least I thought so. But now though her voice was still sweet I found in its melody an indescribable sadness. Sometimes preoccupied with her work she sang the refrain very low very lingeringly A long time ago came out like the saddest cadence of a funeral hymn. She passed into another ballad this time a really doleful one. My feet they are sore and my limbs they are weary     Long is the way and the mountains are wild Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary     Over the path of the poor orphan child. Why did they send me so far and so lonely     Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled? Men are hard-hearted and kind angels only     Watch o’er the steps of a poor orphan child. Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing     Clouds there are none and clear stars beam mild God in His mercy protection is showing     Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child. Ev’n should I fall o’er the broken bridge passing     Or stray in the marshes by false lights beguiled Still will my Father with promise and blessing     Take to His bosom the poor orphan child. There is a thought that for strength should avail me     Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled Heaven is a home and a rest will not fail me     God is a friend to the poor orphan child. Come Miss Jane don’t cry said Bessie as she finished. She might as well have said to the fire don’t burn! but how could she divine the morbid suffering to which I was a prey? In the course of the morning Mr Lloyd came again. What already up! said he as he entered the nursery. Well nurse how is she? Bessie answered that I was doing very well. Then she ought to look more cheerful. Come here Miss Jane your name is Jane is it not? Yes sir Jane Eyre. Well you have been crying Miss Jane Eyre can you tell me what about? Have you any pain? No sir. Oh! I daresay she is crying because she could not go out with Missis in the carriage interposed Bessie. Surely not! why she is too old for such pettishness. I thought so too and my self-esteem being wounded by the false charge I answered promptly I never cried for such a thing in my life I hate going out in the carriage. I cry because I am miserable. Oh fie Miss! said Bessie. The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled. I was standing before him he fixed his eyes on me very steadily his eyes were small and grey not very bright but I dare say I should think them shrewd now he had a hard-featured yet good-natured looking face. Having considered me at leisure he said— What made you ill yesterday? She had a fall said Bessie again putting in her word. Fall! why that is like a baby again! Can’t she manage to walk at her age? She must be eight or nine years old. I was knocked down was the blunt explanation jerked out of me by another pang of mortified pride but that did not make me ill I added while Mr Lloyd helped himself to a pinch of snuff. As he was returning the box to his waistcoat pocket a loud bell rang for the servants’ dinner he knew what it was. That’s for you nurse said he you can go down I’ll give Miss Jane a lecture till you come back. Bessie would rather have stayed but she was obliged to go because punctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall. The fall did not make you ill what did then? pursued Mr Lloyd when Bessie was gone. I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark. I saw Mr Lloyd smile and frown at the same time. Ghost! What you are a baby after all! You are afraid of ghosts? Of Mr Reed’s ghost I am he died in that room and was laid out there. Neither Bessie nor any one else will go into it at night if they can help it and it was cruel to shut me up alone without a candle—so cruel that I think I shall never forget it. Nonsense! And is it that makes you so miserable? Are you afraid now in daylight? No but night will come again before long and besides—I am unhappy—very unhappy for other things. What other things? Can you tell me some of them? How much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult it was to frame any answer! Children can feel but they cannot analyse their feelings and if the analysis is partially effected in thought they know not how to express the result of the process in words. Fearful however of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving my grief by imparting it I after a disturbed pause contrived to frame a meagre though as far as it went true response. For one thing I have no father or mother brothers or sisters. You have a kind aunt and cousins. Again I paused then bunglingly enounced— But John Reed knocked me down and my aunt shut me up in the red-room. Mr Lloyd a second time produced his snuff-box. Don’t you think Gateshead Hall a very beautiful house? asked he. Are you not very thankful to have such a fine place to live at? It is not my house sir and Abbot says I have less right to be here than a servant. Pooh! you can’t be silly enough to wish to leave such a splendid place? If I had anywhere else to go I should be glad to leave it but I can never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman. Perhaps you may—who knows? Have you any relations besides Mrs Reed? I think not sir. None belonging to your father? I don’t know I asked Aunt Reed once and she said possibly I might have some poor low relations called Eyre but she knew nothing about them. If you had such would you like to go to them? I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people still more so to children they have not much idea of industrious working respectable poverty they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes scanty food fireless grates rude manners and debasing vices poverty for me was synonymous with degradation. No I should not like to belong to poor people was my reply. Not even if they were kind to you? I shook my head I could not see how poor people had the means of being kind and then to learn to speak like them to adopt their manners to be uneducated to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the village of Gateshead no I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste. But are your relatives so very poor? Are they working people? I cannot tell Aunt Reed says if I have any they must be a beggarly set I should not like to go a begging. Would you like to go to school? Again I reflected I scarcely knew what school was Bessie sometimes spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks wore backboards and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and precise John Reed hated his school and abused his master but John Reed’s tastes were no rule for mine and if Bessie’s accounts of school-discipline gathered from the young ladies of a family where she had lived before coming to Gateshead were somewhat appalling her details of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies were I thought equally attractive. She boasted of beautiful paintings of landscapes and flowers by them executed of songs they could sing and pieces they could play of purses they could net of French books they could translate till my spirit was moved to emulation as I listened. Besides school would be a complete change it implied a long journey an entire separation from Gateshead an entrance into a new life. I should indeed like to go to school was the audible conclusion of my musings. Well well! who knows what may happen? said Mr Lloyd as he got up. The child ought to have change of air and scene he added speaking to himself nerves not in a good state. Bessie now returned at the same moment the carriage was heard rolling up the gravel-walk. Is that your mistress nurse? asked Mr Lloyd. I should like to speak to her before I go. Bessie invited him to walk into the breakfast-room and led the way out. In the interview which followed between him and Mrs Reed I presume from after-occurrences that the apothecary ventured to recommend my being sent to school and the recommendation was no doubt readily enough adopted for as Abbot said in discussing the subject with Bessie when both sat sewing in the nursery one night after I was in bed and as they thought asleep Missis was she dared say glad enough to get rid of such a tiresome ill-conditioned child who always looked as if she were watching everybody and scheming plots underhand. Abbot I think gave me credit for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes. On that same occasion I learned for the first time from Miss Abbot’s communications to Bessie that my father had been a poor clergyman that my mother had married him against the wishes of her friends who considered the match beneath her that my grandfather Reed was so irritated at her disobedience he cut her off without a shilling that after my mother and father had been married a year the latter caught the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing town where his curacy was situated and where that disease was then prevalent that my mother took the infection from him and both died within a month of each other. Bessie when she heard this narrative sighed and said Poor Miss Jane is to be pitied too Abbot. Yes responded Abbot if she were a nice pretty child one might compassionate her forlornness but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that. Not a great deal to be sure agreed Bessie at any rate a beauty like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition. Yes I doat on Miss Georgiana! cried the fervent Abbot. Little darling!—with her long curls and her blue eyes and such a sweet colour as she has just as if she were painted!—Bessie I could fancy a Welsh rabbit for supper. So could I—with a roast onion. Come we’ll go down. They went. ', 'From my discourse with Mr Lloyd and from the above reported conference between Bessie and Abbot I gathered enough of hope to suffice as a motive for wishing to get well a change seemed near—I desired and waited it in silence. It tarried however days and weeks passed I had regained my normal state of health but no new allusion was made to the subject over which I brooded. Mrs Reed surveyed me at times with a severe eye but seldom addressed me since my illness she had drawn a more marked line of separation than ever between me and her own children appointing me a small closet to sleep in by myself condemning me to take my meals alone and pass all my time in the nursery while my cousins were constantly in the drawing-room. Not a hint however did she drop about sending me to school still I felt an instinctive certainty that she would not long endure me under the same roof with her for her glance now more than ever when turned on me expressed an insuperable and rooted aversion. Eliza and Georgiana evidently acting according to orders spoke to me as little as possible John thrust his tongue in his cheek whenever he saw me and once attempted chastisement but as I instantly turned against him roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt which had stirred my corruption before he thought it better to desist and ran from me uttering execrations and vowing I had burst his nose. I had indeed levelled at that prominent feature as hard a blow as my knuckles could inflict and when I saw that either that or my look daunted him I had the greatest inclination to follow up my advantage to purpose but he was already with his mama. I heard him in a blubbering tone commence the tale of how that nasty Jane Eyre had flown at him like a mad cat he was stopped rather harshly— Don’t talk to me about her John I told you not to go near her she is not worthy of notice I do not choose that either you or your sisters should associate with her. Here leaning over the banister I cried out suddenly and without at all deliberating on my words— They are not fit to associate with me. Mrs Reed was rather a stout woman but on hearing this strange and audacious declaration she ran nimbly up the stair swept me like a whirlwind into the nursery and crushing me down on the edge of my crib dared me in an emphatic voice to rise from that place or utter one syllable during the remainder of the day. What would Uncle Reed say to you if he were alive? was my scarcely voluntary demand. I say scarcely voluntary for it seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance something spoke out of me over which I had no control. What? said Mrs Reed under her breath her usually cold composed grey eye became troubled with a look like fear she took her hand from my arm and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether I were child or fiend. I was now in for it. My Uncle Reed is in heaven and can see all you do and think and so can papa and mama they know how you shut me up all day long and how you wish me dead. Mrs Reed soon rallied her spirits she shook me most soundly she boxed both my ears and then left me without a word. Bessie supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour’s length in which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof. I half believed her for I felt indeed only bad feelings surging in my breast. November December and half of January passed away. Christmas and the New Year had been celebrated at Gateshead with the usual festive cheer presents had been interchanged dinners and evening parties given. From every enjoyment I was of course excluded my share of the gaiety consisted in witnessing the daily apparelling of Eliza and Georgiana and seeing them descend to the drawing-room dressed out in thin muslin frocks and scarlet sashes with hair elaborately ringletted and afterwards in listening to the sound of the piano or the harp played below to the passing to and fro of the butler and footman to the jingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed to the broken hum of conversation as the drawing-room door opened and closed. When tired of this occupation I would retire from the stairhead to the solitary and silent nursery there though somewhat sad I was not miserable. To speak truth I had not the least wish to go into company for in company I was very rarely noticed and if Bessie had but been kind and companionable I should have deemed it a treat to spend the evenings quietly with her instead of passing them under the formidable eye of Mrs Reed in a room full of ladies and gentlemen. But Bessie as soon as she had dressed her young ladies used to take herself off to the lively regions of the kitchen and housekeeper’s room generally bearing the candle along with her. I then sat with my doll on my knee till the fire got low glancing round occasionally to make sure that nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room and when the embers sank to a dull red I undressed hastily tugging at knots and strings as I best might and sought shelter from cold and darkness in my crib. To this crib I always took my doll human beings must love something and in the dearth of worthier objects of affection I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy half fancying it alive and capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown and when it lay there safe and warm I was comparatively happy believing it to be happy likewise. Long did the hours seem while I waited the departure of the company and listened for the sound of Bessie’s step on the stairs sometimes she would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or her scissors or perhaps to bring me something by way of supper—a bun or a cheese-cake—then she would sit on the bed while I ate it and when I had finished she would tuck the clothes round me and twice she kissed me and said Good night Miss Jane. When thus gentle Bessie seemed to me the best prettiest kindest being in the world and I wished most intensely that she would always be so pleasant and amiable and never push me about or scold or task me unreasonably as she was too often wont to do. Bessie Lee must I think have been a girl of good natural capacity for she was smart in all she did and had a remarkable knack of narrative so at least I judge from the impression made on me by her nursery tales. She was pretty too if my recollections of her face and person are correct. I remember her as a slim young woman with black hair dark eyes very nice features and good clear complexion but she had a capricious and hasty temper and indifferent ideas of principle or justice still such as she was I preferred her to any one else at Gateshead Hall. It was the fifteenth of January about nine o’clock in the morning Bessie was gone down to breakfast my cousins had not yet been summoned to their mama Eliza was putting on her bonnet and warm garden-coat to go and feed her poultry an occupation of which she was fond and not less so of selling the eggs to the housekeeper and hoarding up the money she thus obtained. She had a turn for traffic and a marked propensity for saving shown not only in the vending of eggs and chickens but also in driving hard bargains with the gardener about flower-roots seeds and slips of plants that functionary having orders from Mrs Reed to buy of his young lady all the products of her parterre she wished to sell and Eliza would have sold the hair off her head if she could have made a handsome profit thereby. As to her money she first secreted it in odd corners wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper but some of these hoards having been discovered by the housemaid Eliza fearful of one day losing her valued treasure consented to intrust it to her mother at a usurious rate of interest—fifty or sixty per cent. which interest she exacted every quarter keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy. Georgiana sat on a high stool dressing her hair at the glass and interweaving her curls with artificial flowers and faded feathers of which she had found a store in a drawer in the attic. I was making my bed having received strict orders from Bessie to get it arranged before she returned for Bessie now frequently employed me as a sort of under-nurserymaid to tidy the room dust the chairs &c.. Having spread the quilt and folded my night-dress I went to the window-seat to put in order some picture-books and doll’s house furniture scattered there an abrupt command from Georgiana to let her playthings alone for the tiny chairs and mirrors the fairy plates and cups were her property stopped my proceedings and then for lack of other occupation I fell to breathing on the frost-flowers with which the window was fretted and thus clearing a space in the glass through which I might look out on the grounds where all was still and petrified under the influence of a hard frost. From this window were visible the porter’s lodge and the carriage-road and just as I had dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage veiling the panes as left room to look out I saw the gates thrown open and a carriage roll through. I watched it ascending the drive with indifference carriages often came to Gateshead but none ever brought visitors in whom I was interested it stopped in front of the house the door-bell rang loudly the new-comer was admitted. All this being nothing to me my vacant attention soon found livelier attraction in the spectacle of a little hungry robin which came and chirruped on the twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the casement. The remains of my breakfast of bread and milk stood on the table and having crumbled a morsel of roll I was tugging at the sash to put out the crumbs on the window-sill when Bessie came running upstairs into the nursery. Miss Jane take off your pinafore what are you doing there? Have you washed your hands and face this morning? I gave another tug before I answered for I wanted the bird to be secure of its bread the sash yielded I scattered the crumbs some on the stone sill some on the cherry-tree bough then closing the window I replied— No Bessie I have only just finished dusting. Troublesome careless child! and what are you doing now? You look quite red as if you had been about some mischief what were you opening the window for? I was spared the trouble of answering for Bessie seemed in too great a hurry to listen to explanations she hauled me to the washstand inflicted a merciless but happily brief scrub on my face and hands with soap water and a coarse towel disciplined my head with a bristly brush denuded me of my pinafore and then hurrying me to the top of the stairs bid me go down directly as I was wanted in the breakfast-room. I would have asked who wanted me I would have demanded if Mrs Reed was there but Bessie was already gone and had closed the nursery-door upon me. I slowly descended. For nearly three months I had never been called to Mrs Reed’s presence restricted so long to the nursery the breakfast dining and drawing-rooms were become for me awful regions on which it dismayed me to intrude. I now stood in the empty hall before me was the breakfast-room door and I stopped intimidated and trembling. What a miserable little poltroon had fear engendered of unjust punishment made of me in those days! I feared to return to the nursery and feared to go forward to the parlour ten minutes I stood in agitated hesitation the vehement ringing of the breakfast-room bell decided me I must enter. Who could want me? I asked inwardly as with both hands I turned the stiff door-handle which for a second or two resisted my efforts. What should I see besides Aunt Reed in the apartment?—a man or a woman? The handle turned the door unclosed and passing through and curtseying low I looked up at—a black pillar!—such at least appeared to me at first sight the straight narrow sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug the grim face at the top was like a carved mask placed above the shaft by way of capital. Mrs Reed occupied her usual seat by the fireside she made a signal to me to approach I did so and she introduced me to the stony stranger with the words This is the little girl respecting whom I applied to you. He for it was a man turned his head slowly towards where I stood and having examined me with the two inquisitive-looking grey eyes which twinkled under a pair of bushy brows said solemnly and in a bass voice Her size is small what is her age? Ten years. So much? was the doubtful answer and he prolonged his scrutiny for some minutes. Presently he addressed me—Your name little girl? Jane Eyre sir. In uttering these words I looked up he seemed to me a tall gentleman but then I was very little his features were large and they and all the lines of his frame were equally harsh and prim. Well Jane Eyre and are you a good child? Impossible to reply to this in the affirmative my little world held a contrary opinion I was silent. Mrs Reed answered for me by an expressive shake of the head adding soon Perhaps the less said on that subject the better Mr Brocklehurst. Sorry indeed to hear it! she and I must have some talk and bending from the perpendicular he installed his person in the arm-chair opposite Mrs Reed’s. Come here he said. I stepped across the rug he placed me square and straight before him. What a face he had now that it was almost on a level with mine! what a great nose! and what a mouth! and what large prominent teeth! No sight so sad as that of a naughty child he began especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death? They go to hell was my ready and orthodox answer. And what is hell? Can you tell me that? A pit full of fire. And should you like to fall into that pit and to be burning there for ever? No sir. What must you do to avoid it? I deliberated a moment my answer when it did come was objectionable I must keep in good health and not die. How can you keep in good health? Children younger than you die daily. I buried a little child of five years old only a day or two since—a good little child whose soul is now in heaven. It is to be feared the same could not be said of you were you to be called hence. Not being in a condition to remove his doubt I only cast my eyes down on the two large feet planted on the rug and sighed wishing myself far enough away. I hope that sigh is from the heart and that you repent of ever having been the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress. Benefactress! benefactress! said I inwardly they all call Mrs Reed my benefactress if so a benefactress is a disagreeable thing. Do you say your prayers night and morning? continued my interrogator. Yes sir. Do you read your Bible? Sometimes. With pleasure? Are you fond of it? I like Revelations and the book of Daniel and Genesis and Samuel and a little bit of Exodus and some parts of Kings and Chronicles and Job and Jonah. And the Psalms? I hope you like them? No sir. No? oh shocking! I have a little boy younger than you who knows six Psalms by heart and when you ask him which he would rather have a gingerbread-nut to eat or a verse of a Psalm to learn he says ‘Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms’ says he ‘I wish to be a little angel here below’ he then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety. Psalms are not interesting I remarked. That proves you have a wicked heart and you must pray to God to change it to give you a new and clean one to take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I was about to propound a question touching the manner in which that operation of changing my heart was to be performed when Mrs Reed interposed telling me to sit down she then proceeded to carry on the conversation herself. Mr Brocklehurst I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote to you three weeks ago that this little girl has not quite the character and disposition I could wish should you admit her into Lowood school I should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to keep a strict eye on her and above all to guard against her worst fault a tendency to deceit. I mention this in your hearing Jane that you may not attempt to impose on Mr Brocklehurst. Well might I dread well might I dislike Mrs Reed for it was her nature to wound me cruelly never was I happy in her presence however carefully I obeyed however strenuously I strove to please her my efforts were still repulsed and repaid by such sentences as the above. Now uttered before a stranger the accusation cut me to the heart I dimly perceived that she was already obliterating hope from the new phase of existence which she destined me to enter I felt though I could not have expressed the feeling that she was sowing aversion and unkindness along my future path I saw myself transformed under Mr Brocklehurst’s eye into an artful noxious child and what could I do to remedy the injury? Nothing indeed thought I as I struggled to repress a sob and hastily wiped away some tears the impotent evidences of my anguish. Deceit is indeed a sad fault in a child said Mr Brocklehurst it is akin to falsehood and all liars will have their portion in the lake burning with fire and brimstone she shall however be watched Mrs Reed. I will speak to Miss Temple and the teachers. I should wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects continued my benefactress to be made useful to be kept humble as for the vacations she will with your permission spend them always at Lowood. Your decisions are perfectly judicious madam returned Mr Brocklehurst. Humility is a Christian grace and one peculiarly appropriate to the pupils of Lowood I therefore direct that especial care shall be bestowed on its cultivation amongst them. I have studied how best to mortify in them the worldly sentiment of pride and only the other day I had a pleasing proof of my success. My second daughter Augusta went with her mama to visit the school and on her return she exclaimed ‘Oh dear papa how quiet and plain all the girls at Lowood look with their hair combed behind their ears and their long pinafores and those little holland pockets outside their frocks—they are almost like poor people’s children! and’ said she ‘they looked at my dress and mama’s as if they had never seen a silk gown before.’ This is the state of things I quite approve returned Mrs Reed had I sought all England over I could scarcely have found a system more exactly fitting a child like Jane Eyre. Consistency my dear Mr Brocklehurst I advocate consistency in all things. Consistency madam is the first of Christian duties and it has been observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment of Lowood plain fare simple attire unsophisticated accommodations hardy and active habits such is the order of the day in the house and its inhabitants. Quite right sir. I may then depend upon this child being received as a pupil at Lowood and there being trained in conformity to her position and prospects? Madam you may she shall be placed in that nursery of chosen plants and I trust she will show herself grateful for the inestimable privilege of her election. I will send her then as soon as possible Mr Brocklehurst for I assure you I feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility that was becoming too irksome. No doubt no doubt madam and now I wish you good morning. I shall return to Brocklehurst Hall in the course of a week or two my good friend the Archdeacon will not permit me to leave him sooner. I shall send Miss Temple notice that she is to expect a new girl so that there will be no difficulty about receiving her. Good-bye. Good-bye Mr Brocklehurst remember me to Mrs and Miss Brocklehurst and to Augusta and Theodore and Master Broughton Brocklehurst. I will madam. Little girl here is a book entitled the ‘Child’s Guide’ read it with prayer especially that part containing ‘An account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G—— a naughty child addicted to falsehood and deceit.’ With these words Mr Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn in a cover and having rung for his carriage he departed. Mrs Reed and I were left alone some minutes passed in silence she was sewing I was watching her. Mrs Reed might be at that time some six or seven and thirty she was a woman of robust frame square-shouldered and strong-limbed not tall and though stout not obese she had a somewhat large face the under jaw being much developed and very solid her brow was low her chin large and prominent mouth and nose sufficiently regular under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth her skin was dark and opaque her hair nearly flaxen her constitution was sound as a bell—illness never came near her she was an exact clever manager her household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control her children only at times defied her authority and laughed it to scorn she dressed well and had a presence and port calculated to set off handsome attire. Sitting on a low stool a few yards from her arm-chair I examined her figure I perused her features. In my hand I held the tract containing the sudden death of the Liar to which narrative my attention had been pointed as to an appropriate warning. What had just passed what Mrs Reed had said concerning me to Mr Brocklehurst the whole tenor of their conversation was recent raw and stinging in my mind I had felt every word as acutely as I had heard it plainly and a passion of resentment fomented now within me. Mrs Reed looked up from her work her eye settled on mine her fingers at the same time suspended their nimble movements. Go out of the room return to the nursery was her mandate. My look or something else must have struck her as offensive for she spoke with extreme though suppressed irritation. I got up I went to the door I came back again I walked to the window across the room then close up to her. Speak I must I had been trodden on severely and must turn but how? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence— I am not deceitful if I were I should say I loved you but I declare I do not love you I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed and this book about the liar you may give to your girl Georgiana for it is she who tells lies and not I. Mrs Reed’s hands still lay on her work inactive her eye of ice continued to dwell freezingly on mine. What more have you to say? she asked rather in the tone in which a person might address an opponent of adult age than such as is ordinarily used to a child. That eye of hers that voice stirred every antipathy I had. Shaking from head to foot thrilled with ungovernable excitement I continued— I am glad you are no relation of mine I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up and if any one asks me how I liked you and how you treated me I will say the very thought of you makes me sick and that you treated me with miserable cruelty. How dare you affirm that Jane Eyre? How dare I Mrs Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth. You think I have no feelings and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness but I cannot live so and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me back—roughly and violently thrust me back—into the red-room and locked me up there to my dying day though I was in agony though I cried out while suffocating with distress ‘Have mercy! Have mercy Aunt Reed!’ And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions this exact tale. People think you a good woman but you are bad hard-hearted. You are deceitful! How dare I Mrs Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth Ere I had finished this reply my soul began to expand to exult with the strangest sense of freedom of triumph I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty. Not without cause was this sentiment Mrs Reed looked frightened her work had slipped from her knee she was lifting up her hands rocking herself to and fro and even twisting her face as if she would cry. Jane you are under a mistake what is the matter with you? Why do you tremble so violently? Would you like to drink some water? No Mrs Reed. Is there anything else you wish for Jane? I assure you I desire to be your friend. Not you. You told Mr Brocklehurst I had a bad character a deceitful disposition and I’ll let everybody at Lowood know what you are and what you have done. Jane you don’t understand these things children must be corrected for their faults. Deceit is not my fault! I cried out in a savage high voice. But you are passionate Jane that you must allow and now return to the nursery—there’s a dear—and lie down a little. I am not your dear I cannot lie down send me to school soon Mrs Reed for I hate to live here. I will indeed send her to school soon murmured Mrs Reed sotto voce and gathering up her work she abruptly quitted the apartment. I was left there alone—winner of the field. It was the hardest battle I had fought and the first victory I had gained I stood awhile on the rug where Mr Brocklehurst had stood and I enjoyed my conqueror’s solitude. First I smiled to myself and felt elate but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its elders as I had done cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play as I had given mine without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath alive glancing devouring would have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs Reed the same ridge black and blasted after the flames are dead would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition when half-an-hour’s silence and reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct and the dreariness of my hated and hating position. Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time as aromatic wine it seemed on swallowing warm and racy its after-flavour metallic and corroding gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs Reed’s pardon but I knew partly from experience and partly from instinct that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature. I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of sombre indignation. I took a book—some Arabian tales I sat down and endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of the subject my own thoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found fascinating. I opened the glass-door in the breakfast-room the shrubbery was quite still the black frost reigned unbroken by sun or breeze through the grounds. I covered my head and arms with the skirt of my frock and went out to walk in a part of the plantation which was quite sequestrated but I found no pleasure in the silent trees the falling fir-cones the congealed relics of autumn russet leaves swept by past winds in heaps and now stiffened together. I leaned against a gate and looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding where the short grass was nipped and blanched. It was a very grey day a most opaque sky onding on snaw canopied all thence flakes fell at intervals which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without melting. I stood a wretched child enough whispering to myself over and over again What shall I do?—what shall I do? All at once I heard a clear voice call Miss Jane! where are you? Come to lunch! It was Bessie I knew well enough but I did not stir her light step came tripping down the path. You naughty little thing! she said. Why don’t you come when you are called? Bessie’s presence compared with the thoughts over which I had been brooding seemed cheerful even though as usual she was somewhat cross. The fact is after my conflict with and victory over Mrs Reed I was not disposed to care much for the nursemaid’s transitory anger and I was disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of heart. I just put my two arms round her and said Come Bessie! don’t scold. The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated to indulge in somehow it pleased her. You are a strange child Miss Jane she said as she looked down at me a little roving solitary thing and you are going to school I suppose? I nodded. And won’t you be sorry to leave poor Bessie? What does Bessie care for me? She is always scolding me. Because you’re such a queer frightened shy little thing. You should be bolder. What! to get more knocks? Nonsense! But you are rather put upon that’s certain. My mother said when she came to see me last week that she would not like a little one of her own to be in your place.—Now come in and I’ve some good news for you. I don’t think you have Bessie. Child! what do you mean? What sorrowful eyes you fix on me! Well but Missis and the young ladies and Master John are going out to tea this afternoon and you shall have tea with me. I’ll ask cook to bake you a little cake and then you shall help me to look over your drawers for I am soon to pack your trunk. Missis intends you to leave Gateshead in a day or two and you shall choose what toys you like to take with you. Bessie you must promise not to scold me any more till I go. Well I will but mind you are a very good girl and don’t be afraid of me. Don’t start when I chance to speak rather sharply it’s so provoking. I don’t think I shall ever be afraid of you again Bessie because I have got used to you and I shall soon have another set of people to dread. If you dread them they’ll dislike you. As you do Bessie? I don’t dislike you Miss I believe I am fonder of you than of all the others. You don’t show it. You little sharp thing! you’ve got quite a new way of talking. What makes you so venturesome and hardy? Why I shall soon be away from you and besides—I was going to say something about what had passed between me and Mrs Reed but on second thoughts I considered it better to remain silent on that head. And so you’re glad to leave me? Not at all Bessie indeed just now I’m rather sorry. Just now! and rather! How coolly my little lady says it! I dare say now if I were to ask you for a kiss you wouldn’t give it me you’d say you’d rather not. I’ll kiss you and welcome bend your head down. Bessie stooped we mutually embraced and I followed her into the house quite comforted. That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony and in the evening Bessie told me some of her most enchanting stories and sang me some of her sweetest songs. Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine. ', 'Five o’clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of January when Bessie brought a candle into my closet and found me already up and nearly dressed. I had risen half-an-hour before her entrance and had washed my face and put on my clothes by the light of a half-moon just setting whose rays streamed through the narrow window near my crib. I was to leave Gateshead that day by a coach which passed the lodge gates at six A.M. Bessie was the only person yet risen she had lit a fire in the nursery where she now proceeded to make my breakfast. Few children can eat when excited with the thoughts of a journey nor could I. Bessie having pressed me in vain to take a few spoonfuls of the boiled milk and bread she had prepared for me wrapped up some biscuits in a paper and put them into my bag then she helped me on with my pelisse and bonnet and wrapping herself in a shawl she and I left the nursery. As we passed Mrs Reed’s bedroom she said Will you go in and bid Missis good-bye? No Bessie she came to my crib last night when you were gone down to supper and said I need not disturb her in the morning or my cousins either and she told me to remember that she had always been my best friend and to speak of her and be grateful to her accordingly. What did you say Miss? Nothing I covered my face with the bedclothes and turned from her to the wall. That was wrong Miss Jane. It was quite right Bessie. Your Missis has not been my friend she has been my foe. O Miss Jane! don’t say so! Good-bye to Gateshead! cried I as we passed through the hall and went out at the front door. The moon was set and it was very dark Bessie carried a lantern whose light glanced on wet steps and gravel road sodden by a recent thaw. Raw and chill was the winter morning my teeth chattered as I hastened down the drive. There was a light in the porter’s lodge when we reached it we found the porter’s wife just kindling her fire my trunk which had been carried down the evening before stood corded at the door. It wanted but a few minutes of six and shortly after that hour had struck the distant roll of wheels announced the coming coach I went to the door and watched its lamps approach rapidly through the gloom. Is she going by herself? asked the porter’s wife. Yes. And how far is it? Fifty miles. What a long way! I wonder Mrs Reed is not afraid to trust her so far alone. The coach drew up there it was at the gates with its four horses and its top laden with passengers the guard and coachman loudly urged haste my trunk was hoisted up I was taken from Bessie’s neck to which I clung with kisses. Be sure and take good care of her cried she to the guard as he lifted me into the inside. Ay ay! was the answer the door was slapped to a voice exclaimed All right and on we drove. Thus was I severed from Bessie and Gateshead thus whirled away to unknown and as I then deemed remote and mysterious regions. I remember but little of the journey I only know that the day seemed to me of a preternatural length and that we appeared to travel over hundreds of miles of road. We passed through several towns and in one a very large one the coach stopped the horses were taken out and the passengers alighted to dine. I was carried into an inn where the guard wanted me to have some dinner but as I had no appetite he left me in an immense room with a fireplace at each end a chandelier pendent from the ceiling and a little red gallery high up against the wall filled with musical instruments. Here I walked about for a long time feeling very strange and mortally apprehensive of some one coming in and kidnapping me for I believed in kidnappers their exploits having frequently figured in Bessie’s fireside chronicles. At last the guard returned once more I was stowed away in the coach my protector mounted his own seat sounded his hollow horn and away we rattled over the stony street of L——. The afternoon came on wet and somewhat misty as it waned into dusk I began to feel that we were getting very far indeed from Gateshead we ceased to pass through towns the country changed great grey hills heaved up round the horizon as twilight deepened we descended a valley dark with wood and long after night had overclouded the prospect I heard a wild wind rushing amongst trees. Lulled by the sound I at last dropped asleep I had not long slumbered when the sudden cessation of motion awoke me the coach-door was open and a person like a servant was standing at it I saw her face and dress by the light of the lamps. Is there a little girl called Jane Eyre here? she asked. I answered Yes and was then lifted out my trunk was handed down and the coach instantly drove away. I was stiff with long sitting and bewildered with the noise and motion of the coach gathering my faculties I looked about me. Rain wind and darkness filled the air nevertheless I dimly discerned a wall before me and a door open in it through this door I passed with my new guide she shut and locked it behind her. There was now visible a house or houses—for the building spread far—with many windows and lights burning in some we went up a broad pebbly path splashing wet and were admitted at a door then the servant led me through a passage into a room with a fire where she left me alone. I stood and warmed my numbed fingers over the blaze then I looked round there was no candle but the uncertain light from the hearth showed by intervals papered walls carpet curtains shining mahogany furniture it was a parlour not so spacious or splendid as the drawing-room at Gateshead but comfortable enough. I was puzzling to make out the subject of a picture on the wall when the door opened and an individual carrying a light entered another followed close behind. The first was a tall lady with dark hair dark eyes and a pale and large forehead her figure was partly enveloped in a shawl her countenance was grave her bearing erect. The child is very young to be sent alone said she putting her candle down on the table. She considered me attentively for a minute or two then further added— She had better be put to bed soon she looks tired are you tired? she asked placing her hand on my shoulder. A little ma’am. And hungry too no doubt let her have some supper before she goes to bed Miss Miller. Is this the first time you have left your parents to come to school my little girl? I explained to her that I had no parents. She inquired how long they had been dead then how old I was what was my name whether I could read write and sew a little then she touched my cheek gently with her forefinger and saying She hoped I should be a good child dismissed me along with Miss Miller. The lady I had left might be about twenty-nine the one who went with me appeared some years younger the first impressed me by her voice look and air. Miss Miller was more ordinary ruddy in complexion though of a careworn countenance hurried in gait and action like one who had always a multiplicity of tasks on hand she looked indeed what I afterwards found she really was an under-teacher. Led by her I passed from compartment to compartment from passage to passage of a large and irregular building till emerging from the total and somewhat dreary silence pervading that portion of the house we had traversed we came upon the hum of many voices and presently entered a wide long room with great deal tables two at each end on each of which burnt a pair of candles and seated all round on benches a congregation of girls of every age from nine or ten to twenty. Seen by the dim light of the dips their number to me appeared countless though not in reality exceeding eighty they were uniformly dressed in brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion and long holland pinafores. It was the hour of study they were engaged in conning over their to-morrow’s task and the hum I had heard was the combined result of their whispered repetitions. Miss Miller signed to me to sit on a bench near the door then walking up to the top of the long room she cried out— Monitors collect the lesson-books and put them away! Four tall girls arose from different tables and going round gathered the books and removed them. Miss Miller again gave the word of command— Monitors fetch the supper-trays! The tall girls went out and returned presently each bearing a tray with portions of something I knew not what arranged thereon and a pitcher of water and mug in the middle of each tray. The portions were handed round those who liked took a draught of the water the mug being common to all. When it came to my turn I drank for I was thirsty but did not touch the food excitement and fatigue rendering me incapable of eating I now saw however that it was a thin oaten cake shared into fragments. The meal over prayers were read by Miss Miller and the classes filed off two and two upstairs. Overpowered by this time with weariness I scarcely noticed what sort of a place the bedroom was except that like the schoolroom I saw it was very long. To-night I was to be Miss Miller’s bed-fellow she helped me to undress when laid down I glanced at the long rows of beds each of which was quickly filled with two occupants in ten minutes the single light was extinguished and amidst silence and complete darkness I fell asleep. The night passed rapidly I was too tired even to dream I only once awoke to hear the wind rave in furious gusts and the rain fall in torrents and to be sensible that Miss Miller had taken her place by my side. When I again unclosed my eyes a loud bell was ringing the girls were up and dressing day had not yet begun to dawn and a rushlight or two burned in the room. I too rose reluctantly it was bitter cold and I dressed as well as I could for shivering and washed when there was a basin at liberty which did not occur soon as there was but one basin to six girls on the stands down the middle of the room. Again the bell rang all formed in file two and two and in that order descended the stairs and entered the cold and dimly lit schoolroom here prayers were read by Miss Miller afterwards she called out— Form classes! A great tumult succeeded for some minutes during which Miss Miller repeatedly exclaimed Silence! and Order! When it subsided I saw them all drawn up in four semicircles before four chairs placed at the four tables all held books in their hands and a great book like a Bible lay on each table before the vacant seat. A pause of some seconds succeeded filled up by the low vague hum of numbers Miss Miller walked from class to class hushing this indefinite sound. A distant bell tinkled immediately three ladies entered the room each walked to a table and took her seat Miss Miller assumed the fourth vacant chair which was that nearest the door and around which the smallest of the children were assembled to this inferior class I was called and placed at the bottom of it. Business now began the day’s Collect was repeated then certain texts of Scripture were said and to these succeeded a protracted reading of chapters in the Bible which lasted an hour. By the time that exercise was terminated day had fully dawned. The indefatigable bell now sounded for the fourth time the classes were marshalled and marched into another room to breakfast how glad I was to behold a prospect of getting something to eat! I was now nearly sick from inanition having taken so little the day before. The refectory was a great low-ceiled gloomy room on two long tables smoked basins of something hot which however to my dismay sent forth an odour far from inviting. I saw a universal manifestation of discontent when the fumes of the repast met the nostrils of those destined to swallow it from the van of the procession the tall girls of the first class rose the whispered words— Disgusting! The porridge is burnt again! Silence! ejaculated a voice not that of Miss Miller but one of the upper teachers a little and dark personage smartly dressed but of somewhat morose aspect who installed herself at the top of one table while a more buxom lady presided at the other. I looked in vain for her I had first seen the night before she was not visible Miss Miller occupied the foot of the table where I sat and a strange foreign-looking elderly lady the French teacher as I afterwards found took the corresponding seat at the other board. A long grace was said and a hymn sung then a servant brought in some tea for the teachers and the meal began. Ravenous and now very faint I devoured a spoonful or two of my portion without thinking of its taste but the first edge of hunger blunted I perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess burnt porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes famine itself soon sickens over it. The spoons were moved slowly I saw each girl taste her food and try to swallow it but in most cases the effort was soon relinquished. Breakfast was over and none had breakfasted. Thanks being returned for what we had not got and a second hymn chanted the refectory was evacuated for the schoolroom. I was one of the last to go out and in passing the tables I saw one teacher take a basin of the porridge and taste it she looked at the others all their countenances expressed displeasure and one of them the stout one whispered— Abominable stuff! How shameful! A quarter of an hour passed before lessons again began during which the schoolroom was in a glorious tumult for that space of time it seemed to be permitted to talk loud and more freely and they used their privilege. The whole conversation ran on the breakfast which one and all abused roundly. Poor things! it was the sole consolation they had. Miss Miller was now the only teacher in the room a group of great girls standing about her spoke with serious and sullen gestures. I heard the name of Mr Brocklehurst pronounced by some lips at which Miss Miller shook her head disapprovingly but she made no great effort to check the general wrath doubtless she shared in it. A clock in the schoolroom struck nine Miss Miller left her circle and standing in the middle of the room cried— Silence! To your seats! Discipline prevailed in five minutes the confused throng was resolved into order and comparative silence quelled the Babel clamour of tongues. The upper teachers now punctually resumed their posts but still all seemed to wait. Ranged on benches down the sides of the room the eighty girls sat motionless and erect a quaint assemblage they appeared all with plain locks combed from their faces not a curl visible in brown dresses made high and surrounded by a narrow tucker about the throat with little pockets of holland shaped something like a Highlander’s purse tied in front of their frocks and destined to serve the purpose of a work-bag all too wearing woollen stockings and country-made shoes fastened with brass buckles. Above twenty of those clad in this costume were full-grown girls or rather young women it suited them ill and gave an air of oddity even to the prettiest. I was still looking at them and also at intervals examining the teachers—none of whom precisely pleased me for the stout one was a little coarse the dark one not a little fierce the foreigner harsh and grotesque and Miss Miller poor thing! looked purple weather-beaten and over-worked—when as my eye wandered from face to face the whole school rose simultaneously as if moved by a common spring. What was the matter? I had heard no order given I was puzzled. Ere I had gathered my wits the classes were again seated but as all eyes were now turned to one point mine followed the general direction and encountered the personage who had received me last night. She stood at the bottom of the long room on the hearth for there was a fire at each end she surveyed the two rows of girls silently and gravely. Miss Miller approaching seemed to ask her a question and having received her answer went back to her place and said aloud— Monitor of the first class fetch the globes! While the direction was being executed the lady consulted moved slowly up the room. I suppose I have a considerable organ of veneration for I retain yet the sense of admiring awe with which my eyes traced her steps. Seen now in broad daylight she looked tall fair and shapely brown eyes with a benignant light in their irids and a fine pencilling of long lashes round relieved the whiteness of her large front on each of her temples her hair of a very dark brown was clustered in round curls according to the fashion of those times when neither smooth bands nor long ringlets were in vogue her dress also in the mode of the day was of purple cloth relieved by a sort of Spanish trimming of black velvet a gold watch watches were not so common then as now shone at her girdle. Let the reader add to complete the picture refined features a complexion if pale clear and a stately air and carriage and he will have at least as clearly as words can give it a correct idea of the exterior of Miss Temple—Maria Temple as I afterwards saw the name written in a prayer-book intrusted to me to carry to church. The superintendent of Lowood for such was this lady having taken her seat before a pair of globes placed on one of the tables summoned the first class round her and commenced giving a lesson on geography the lower classes were called by the teachers repetitions in history grammar &c. went on for an hour writing and arithmetic succeeded and music lessons were given by Miss Temple to some of the elder girls. The duration of each lesson was measured by the clock which at last struck twelve. The superintendent rose— I have a word to address to the pupils said she. The tumult of cessation from lessons was already breaking forth but it sank at her voice. She went on— You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat you must be hungry—I have ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese shall be served to all. The teachers looked at her with a sort of surprise. It is to be done on my responsibility she added in an explanatory tone to them and immediately afterwards left the room. The bread and cheese was presently brought in and distributed to the high delight and refreshment of the whole school. The order was now given To the garden! Each put on a coarse straw bonnet with strings of coloured calico and a cloak of grey frieze. I was similarly equipped and following the stream I made my way into the open air. The garden was a wide inclosure surrounded with walls so high as to exclude every glimpse of prospect a covered verandah ran down one side and broad walks bordered a middle space divided into scores of little beds these beds were assigned as gardens for the pupils to cultivate and each bed had an owner. When full of flowers they would doubtless look pretty but now at the latter end of January all was wintry blight and brown decay. I shuddered as I stood and looked round me it was an inclement day for outdoor exercise not positively rainy but darkened by a drizzling yellow fog all under foot was still soaking wet with the floods of yesterday. The stronger among the girls ran about and engaged in active games but sundry pale and thin ones herded together for shelter and warmth in the verandah and amongst these as the dense mist penetrated to their shivering frames I heard frequently the sound of a hollow cough. As yet I had spoken to no one nor did anybody seem to take notice of me I stood lonely enough but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed it did not oppress me much. I leant against a pillar of the verandah drew my grey mantle close about me and trying to forget the cold which nipped me without and the unsatisfied hunger which gnawed me within delivered myself up to the employment of watching and thinking. My reflections were too undefined and fragmentary to merit record I hardly yet knew where I was Gateshead and my past life seemed floated away to an immeasurable distance the present was vague and strange and of the future I could form no conjecture. I looked round the convent-like garden and then up at the house—a large building half of which seemed grey and old the other half quite new. The new part containing the schoolroom and dormitory was lit by mullioned and latticed windows which gave it a church-like aspect a stone tablet over the door bore this inscription— LOWOOD INSTITUTION. This portion was rebuilt A.D. —— by Naomi Brocklehurst of Brocklehurst Hall in this county. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.—St. Matt. v. 16. I read these words over and over again I felt that an explanation belonged to them and was unable fully to penetrate their import. I was still pondering the signification of Institution and endeavouring to make out a connection between the first words and the verse of Scripture when the sound of a cough close behind me made me turn my head. I saw a girl sitting on a stone bench near she was bent over a book on the perusal of which she seemed intent from where I stood I could see the title—it was Rasselas a name that struck me as strange and consequently attractive. In turning a leaf she happened to look up and I said to her directly— Is your book interesting? I had already formed the intention of asking her to lend it to me some day. I like it she answered after a pause of a second or two during which she examined me. What is it about? I continued. I hardly know where I found the hardihood thus to open a conversation with a stranger the step was contrary to my nature and habits but I think her occupation touched a chord of sympathy somewhere for I too liked reading though of a frivolous and childish kind I could not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial. You may look at it replied the girl offering me the book. I did so a brief examination convinced me that the contents were less taking than the title Rasselas looked dull to my trifling taste I saw nothing about fairies nothing about genii no bright variety seemed spread over the closely-printed pages. I returned it to her she received it quietly and without saying anything she was about to relapse into her former studious mood again I ventured to disturb her— Can you tell me what the writing on that stone over the door means? What is Lowood Institution? This house where you are come to live. And why do they call it Institution? Is it in any way different from other schools? It is partly a charity-school you and I and all the rest of us are charity-children. I suppose you are an orphan are not either your father or your mother dead? Both died before I can remember. Well all the girls here have lost either one or both parents and this is called an institution for educating orphans. Do we pay no money? Do they keep us for nothing? We pay or our friends pay fifteen pounds a year for each. Then why do they call us charity-children? Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teaching and the deficiency is supplied by subscription. Who subscribes? Different benevolent-minded ladies and gentlemen in this neighbourhood and in London. Who was Naomi Brocklehurst? The lady who built the new part of this house as that tablet records and whose son overlooks and directs everything here. Why? Because he is treasurer and manager of the establishment. Then this house does not belong to that tall lady who wears a watch and who said we were to have some bread and cheese? To Miss Temple? Oh no! I wish it did she has to answer to Mr Brocklehurst for all she does. Mr Brocklehurst buys all our food and all our clothes. Does he live here? No—two miles off at a large hall. Is he a good man? He is a clergyman and is said to do a great deal of good. Did you say that tall lady was called Miss Temple? Yes. And what are the other teachers called? The one with red cheeks is called Miss Smith she attends to the work and cuts out—for we make our own clothes our frocks and pelisses and everything the little one with black hair is Miss Scatcherd she teaches history and grammar and hears the second class repetitions and the one who wears a shawl and has a pocket-handkerchief tied to her side with a yellow ribband is Madame Pierrot she comes from Lisle in France and teaches French. Do you like the teachers? Well enough. Do you like the little black one and the Madame ——?—I cannot pronounce her name as you do. Miss Scatcherd is hasty—you must take care not to offend her Madame Pierrot is not a bad sort of person. But Miss Temple is the best—isn’t she? Miss Temple is very good and very clever she is above the rest because she knows far more than they do. Have you been long here? Two years. Are you an orphan? My mother is dead. Are you happy here? You ask rather too many questions. I have given you answers enough for the present now I want to read. But at that moment the summons sounded for dinner all re-entered the house. The odour which now filled the refectory was scarcely more appetising than that which had regaled our nostrils at breakfast the dinner was served in two huge tin-plated vessels whence rose a strong steam redolent of rancid fat. I found the mess to consist of indifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rusty meat mixed and cooked together. Of this preparation a tolerably abundant plateful was apportioned to each pupil. I ate what I could and wondered within myself whether every day’s fare would be like this. After dinner we immediately adjourned to the schoolroom lessons recommenced and were continued till five o’clock. The only marked event of the afternoon was that I saw the girl with whom I had conversed in the verandah dismissed in disgrace by Miss Scatcherd from a history class and sent to stand in the middle of the large schoolroom. The punishment seemed to me in a high degree ignominious especially for so great a girl—she looked thirteen or upwards. I expected she would show signs of great distress and shame but to my surprise she neither wept nor blushed composed though grave she stood the central mark of all eyes. How can she bear it so quietly—so firmly? I asked of myself. Were I in her place it seems to me I should wish the earth to open and swallow me up. She looks as if she were thinking of something beyond her punishment—beyond her situation of something not round her nor before her. I have heard of day-dreams—is she in a day-dream now? Her eyes are fixed on the floor but I am sure they do not see it—her sight seems turned in gone down into her heart she is looking at what she can remember I believe not at what is really present. I wonder what sort of a girl she is—whether good or naughty. Soon after five P.M. we had another meal consisting of a small mug of coffee and half-a-slice of brown bread. I devoured my bread and drank my coffee with relish but I should have been glad of as much more—I was still hungry. Half-an-hour’s recreation succeeded then study then the glass of water and the piece of oat-cake prayers and bed. Such was my first day at Lowood. ', 'The next day commenced as before getting up and dressing by rushlight but this morning we were obliged to dispense with the ceremony of washing the water in the pitchers was frozen. A change had taken place in the weather the preceding evening and a keen north-east wind whistling through the crevices of our bedroom windows all night long had made us shiver in our beds and turned the contents of the ewers to ice. Before the long hour and a half of prayers and Bible-reading was over I felt ready to perish with cold. Breakfast-time came at last and this morning the porridge was not burnt the quality was eatable the quantity small. How small my portion seemed! I wished it had been doubled. In the course of the day I was enrolled a member of the fourth class and regular tasks and occupations were assigned me hitherto I had only been a spectator of the proceedings at Lowood I was now to become an actor therein. At first being little accustomed to learn by heart the lessons appeared to me both long and difficult the frequent change from task to task too bewildered me and I was glad when about three o’clock in the afternoon Miss Smith put into my hands a border of muslin two yards long together with needle thimble &c. and sent me to sit in a quiet corner of the schoolroom with directions to hem the same. At that hour most of the others were sewing likewise but one class still stood round Miss Scatcherd’s chair reading and as all was quiet the subject of their lessons could be heard together with the manner in which each girl acquitted herself and the animadversions or commendations of Miss Scatcherd on the performance. It was English history among the readers I observed my acquaintance of the verandah at the commencement of the lesson her place had been at the top of the class but for some error of pronunciation or some inattention to stops she was suddenly sent to the very bottom. Even in that obscure position Miss Scatcherd continued to make her an object of constant notice she was continually addressing to her such phrases as the following— Burns such it seems was her name the girls here were all called by their surnames as boys are elsewhere Burns you are standing on the side of your shoe turn your toes out immediately. Burns you poke your chin most unpleasantly draw it in. Burns I insist on your holding your head up I will not have you before me in that attitude &c. &c. A chapter having been read through twice the books were closed and the girls examined. The lesson had comprised part of the reign of Charles I. and there were sundry questions about tonnage and poundage and ship-money which most of them appeared unable to answer still every little difficulty was solved instantly when it reached Burns her memory seemed to have retained the substance of the whole lesson and she was ready with answers on every point. I kept expecting that Miss Scatcherd would praise her attention but instead of that she suddenly cried out— You dirty disagreeable girl! you have never cleaned your nails this morning! Burns made no answer I wondered at her silence. Why thought I does she not explain that she could neither clean her nails nor wash her face as the water was frozen? My attention was now called off by Miss Smith desiring me to hold a skein of thread while she was winding it she talked to me from time to time asking whether I had ever been at school before whether I could mark stitch knit &c. till she dismissed me I could not pursue my observations on Miss Scatcherd’s movements. When I returned to my seat that lady was just delivering an order of which I did not catch the import but Burns immediately left the class and going into the small inner room where the books were kept returned in half a minute carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a respectful curtesy then she quietly and without being told unloosed her pinafore and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns’ eye and while I paused from my sewing because my fingers quivered at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression. Hardened girl! exclaimed Miss Scatcherd nothing can correct you of your slatternly habits carry the rod away. Burns obeyed I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the book-closet she was just putting back her handkerchief into her pocket and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek. The play-hour in the evening I thought the pleasantest fraction of the day at Lowood the bit of bread the draught of coffee swallowed at five o’clock had revived vitality if it had not satisfied hunger the long restraint of the day was slackened the schoolroom felt warmer than in the morning—its fires being allowed to burn a little more brightly to supply in some measure the place of candles not yet introduced the ruddy gloaming the licensed uproar the confusion of many voices gave one a welcome sense of liberty. On the evening of the day on which I had seen Miss Scatcherd flog her pupil Burns I wandered as usual among the forms and tables and laughing groups without a companion yet not feeling lonely when I passed the windows I now and then lifted a blind and looked out it snowed fast a drift was already forming against the lower panes putting my ear close to the window I could distinguish from the gleeful tumult within the disconsolate moan of the wind outside. Probably if I had lately left a good home and kind parents this would have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted the separation that wind would then have saddened my heart this obscure chaos would have disturbed my peace! as it was I derived from both a strange excitement and reckless and feverish I wished the wind to howl more wildly the gloom to deepen to darkness and the confusion to rise to clamour. Jumping over forms and creeping under tables I made my way to one of the fire-places there kneeling by the high wire fender I found Burns absorbed silent abstracted from all round her by the companionship of a book which she read by the dim glare of the embers. Is it still ‘Rasselas’? I asked coming behind her. Yes she said and I have just finished it. And in five minutes more she shut it up. I was glad of this. Now thought I I can perhaps get her to talk. I sat down by her on the floor. What is your name besides Burns? Helen. Do you come a long way from here? I come from a place farther north quite on the borders of Scotland. Will you ever go back? I hope so but nobody can be sure of the future. You must wish to leave Lowood? No! why should I? I was sent to Lowood to get an education and it would be of no use going away until I have attained that object. But that teacher Miss Scatcherd is so cruel to you? Cruel? Not at all! She is severe she dislikes my faults. And if I were in your place I should dislike her I should resist her. If she struck me with that rod I should get it from her hand I should break it under her nose. Probably you would do nothing of the sort but if you did Mr Brocklehurst would expel you from the school that would be a great grief to your relations. It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you and besides the Bible bids us return good for evil. But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged and to be sent to stand in the middle of a room full of people and you are such a great girl I am far younger than you and I could not bear it. Yet it would be your duty to bear it if you could not avoid it it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear. I heard her with wonder I could not comprehend this doctrine of endurance and still less could I understand or sympathise with the forbearance she expressed for her chastiser. Still I felt that Helen Burns considered things by a light invisible to my eyes. I suspected she might be right and I wrong but I would not ponder the matter deeply like Felix I put it off to a more convenient season. You say you have faults Helen what are they? To me you seem very good. Then learn from me not to judge by appearances I am as Miss Scatcherd said slatternly I seldom put and never keep things in order I am careless I forget rules I read when I should learn my lessons I have no method and sometimes I say like you I cannot bear to be subjected to systematic arrangements. This is all very provoking to Miss Scatcherd who is naturally neat punctual and particular. And cross and cruel I added but Helen Burns would not admit my addition she kept silence. Is Miss Temple as severe to you as Miss Scatcherd? At the utterance of Miss Temple’s name a soft smile flitted over her grave face. Miss Temple is full of goodness it pains her to be severe to any one even the worst in the school she sees my errors and tells me of them gently and if I do anything worthy of praise she gives me my meed liberally. One strong proof of my wretchedly defective nature is that even her expostulations so mild so rational have not influence to cure me of my faults and even her praise though I value it most highly cannot stimulate me to continued care and foresight. That is curious said I it is so easy to be careful. For you I have no doubt it is. I observed you in your class this morning and saw you were closely attentive your thoughts never seemed to wander while Miss Miller explained the lesson and questioned you. Now mine continually rove away when I should be listening to Miss Scatcherd and collecting all she says with assiduity often I lose the very sound of her voice I fall into a sort of dream. Sometimes I think I am in Northumberland and that the noises I hear round me are the bubbling of a little brook which runs through Deepden near our house—then when it comes to my turn to reply I have to be awakened and having heard nothing of what was read for listening to the visionary brook I have no answer ready. Yet how well you replied this afternoon. It was mere chance the subject on which we had been reading had interested me. This afternoon instead of dreaming of Deepden I was wondering how a man who wished to do right could act so unjustly and unwisely as Charles the First sometimes did and I thought what a pity it was that with his integrity and conscientiousness he could see no farther than the prerogatives of the crown. If he had but been able to look to a distance and see how what they call the spirit of the age was tending! Still I like Charles—I respect him—I pity him poor murdered king! Yes his enemies were the worst they shed blood they had no right to shed. How dared they kill him! Helen was talking to herself now she had forgotten I could not very well understand her—that I was ignorant or nearly so of the subject she discussed. I recalled her to my level. And when Miss Temple teaches you do your thoughts wander then? No certainly not often because Miss Temple has generally something to say which is newer than my own reflections her language is singularly agreeable to me and the information she communicates is often just what I wished to gain. Well then with Miss Temple you are good? Yes in a passive way I make no effort I follow as inclination guides me. There is no merit in such goodness. A great deal you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust the wicked people would have it all their own way they would never feel afraid and so they would never alter but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason we should strike back again very hard I am sure we should—so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again. You will change your mind I hope when you grow older as yet you are but a little untaught girl. But I feel this Helen I must dislike those who whatever I do to please them persist in disliking me I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved. Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine but Christians and civilised nations disown it. How? I don’t understand. It is not violence that best overcomes hate—nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury. What then? Read the New Testament and observe what Christ says and how He acts make His word your rule and His conduct your example. What does He say? Love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you. Then I should love Mrs Reed which I cannot do I should bless her son John which is impossible. In her turn Helen Burns asked me to explain and I proceeded forthwith to pour out in my own way the tale of my sufferings and resentments. Bitter and truculent when excited I spoke as I felt without reserve or softening. Helen heard me patiently to the end I expected she would then make a remark but she said nothing. Well I asked impatiently is not Mrs Reed a hard-hearted bad woman? She has been unkind to you no doubt because you see she dislikes your cast of character as Miss Scatcherd does mine but how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you! What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are and must be one and all burdened with faults in this world but the time will soon come when I trust we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh and only the spark of the spirit will remain—the impalpable principle of light and thought pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature whence it came it will return perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man—perhaps to pass through gradations of glory from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph! Surely it will never on the contrary be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend? No I cannot believe that I hold another creed which no one ever taught me and which I seldom mention but in which I delight and to which I cling for it extends hope to all it makes Eternity a rest—a mighty home not a terror and an abyss. Besides with this creed I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last with this creed revenge never worries my heart degradation never too deeply disgusts me injustice never crushes me too low I live in calm looking to the end. Helen’s head always drooping sank a little lower as she finished this sentence. I saw by her look she wished no longer to talk to me but rather to converse with her own thoughts. She was not allowed much time for meditation a monitor a great rough girl presently came up exclaiming in a strong Cumberland accent— Helen Burns if you don’t go and put your drawer in order and fold up your work this minute I’ll tell Miss Scatcherd to come and look at it! Helen sighed as her reverie fled and getting up obeyed the monitor without reply as without delay. ', 'My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age and not the golden age either it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks. The fear of failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my lot though these were no trifles. During January February and part of March the deep snows and after their melting the almost impassable roads prevented our stirring beyond the garden walls except to go to church but within these limits we had to pass an hour every day in the open air. Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold we had no boots the snow got into our shoes and melted there our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains as were our feet I remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening when my feet inflamed and the torture of thrusting the swelled raw and stiff toes into my shoes in the morning. Then the scanty supply of food was distressing with the keen appetites of growing children we had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse which pressed hardly on the younger pupils whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity they would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion. Many a time I have shared between two claimants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at tea-time and after relinquishing to a third half the contents of my mug of coffee I have swallowed the remainder with an accompaniment of secret tears forced from me by the exigency of hunger. Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season. We had to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church where our patron officiated. We set out cold we arrived at church colder during the morning service we became almost paralysed. It was too far to return to dinner and an allowance of cold meat and bread in the same penurious proportion observed in our ordinary meals was served round between the services. At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed and hilly road where the bitter winter wind blowing over a range of snowy summits to the north almost flayed the skin from our faces. I can remember Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly along our drooping line her plaid cloak which the frosty wind fluttered gathered close about her and encouraging us by precept and example to keep up our spirits and march forward as she said like stalwart soldiers. The other teachers poor things were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others. How we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when we got back! But to the little ones at least this was denied each hearth in the schoolroom was immediately surrounded by a double row of great girls and behind them the younger children crouched in groups wrapping their starved arms in their pinafores. A little solace came at tea-time in the shape of a double ration of bread—a whole instead of a half slice—with the delicious addition of a thin scrape of butter it was the hebdomadal treat to which we all looked forward from Sabbath to Sabbath. I generally contrived to reserve a moiety of this bounteous repast for myself but the remainder I was invariably obliged to part with. The Sunday evening was spent in repeating by heart the Church Catechism and the fifth sixth and seventh chapters of St. Matthew and in listening to a long sermon read by Miss Miller whose irrepressible yawns attested her weariness. A frequent interlude of these performances was the enactment of the part of Eutychus by some half-dozen of little girls who overpowered with sleep would fall down if not out of the third loft yet off the fourth form and be taken up half dead. The remedy was to thrust them forward into the centre of the schoolroom and oblige them to stand there till the sermon was finished. Sometimes their feet failed them and they sank together in a heap they were then propped up with the monitors’ high stools. I have not yet alluded to the visits of Mr Brocklehurst and indeed that gentleman was from home during the greater part of the first month after my arrival perhaps prolonging his stay with his friend the archdeacon his absence was a relief to me. I need not say that I had my own reasons for dreading his coming but come he did at last. One afternoon I had then been three weeks at Lowood as I was sitting with a slate in my hand puzzling over a sum in long division my eyes raised in abstraction to the window caught sight of a figure just passing I recognised almost instinctively that gaunt outline and when two minutes after all the school teachers included rose en masse it was not necessary for me to look up in order to ascertain whose entrance they thus greeted. A long stride measured the schoolroom and presently beside Miss Temple who herself had risen stood the same black column which had frowned on me so ominously from the hearthrug of Gateshead. I now glanced sideways at this piece of architecture. Yes I was right it was Mr Brocklehurst buttoned up in a surtout and looking longer narrower and more rigid than ever. I had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition too well I remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs Reed about my disposition &c. the promise pledged by Mr Brocklehurst to apprise Miss Temple and the teachers of my vicious nature. All along I had been dreading the fulfilment of this promise—I had been looking out daily for the Coming Man whose information respecting my past life and conversation was to brand me as a bad child for ever now there he was. He stood at Miss Temple’s side he was speaking low in her ear I did not doubt he was making disclosures of my villainy and I watched her eye with painful anxiety expecting every moment to see its dark orb turn on me a glance of repugnance and contempt. I listened too and as I happened to be seated quite at the top of the room I caught most of what he said its import relieved me from immediate apprehension. I suppose Miss Temple the thread I bought at Lowton will do it struck me that it would be just of the quality for the calico chemises and I sorted the needles to match. You may tell Miss Smith that I forgot to make a memorandum of the darning needles but she shall have some papers sent in next week and she is not on any account to give out more than one at a time to each pupil if they have more they are apt to be careless and lose them. And O ma’am! I wish the woollen stockings were better looked to!—when I was here last I went into the kitchen-garden and examined the clothes drying on the line there was a quantity of black hose in a very bad state of repair from the size of the holes in them I was sure they had not been well mended from time to time. He paused. Your directions shall be attended to sir said Miss Temple. And ma’am he continued the laundress tells me some of the girls have two clean tuckers in the week it is too much the rules limit them to one. I think I can explain that circumstance sir. Agnes and Catherine Johnstone were invited to take tea with some friends at Lowton last Thursday and I gave them leave to put on clean tuckers for the occasion. Mr Brocklehurst nodded. Well for once it may pass but please not to let the circumstance occur too often. And there is another thing which surprised me I find in settling accounts with the housekeeper that a lunch consisting of bread and cheese has twice been served out to the girls during the past fortnight. How is this? I looked over the regulations and I find no such meal as lunch mentioned. Who introduced this innovation? and by what authority? I must be responsible for the circumstance sir replied Miss Temple the breakfast was so ill prepared that the pupils could not possibly eat it and I dared not allow them to remain fasting till dinner-time. Madam allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence but to render them hardy patient self-denying. Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur such as the spoiling of a meal the under or the over dressing of a dish the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institution it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the pupils by encouraging them to evince fortitude under the temporary privation. A brief address on those occasions would not be mistimed wherein a judicious instructor would take the opportunity of referring to the sufferings of the primitive Christians to the torments of martyrs to the exhortations of our blessed Lord Himself calling upon His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him to His warnings that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God to His divine consolations ‘If ye suffer hunger or thirst for My sake happy are ye.’ Oh madam when you put bread and cheese instead of burnt porridge into these children’s mouths you may indeed feed their vile bodies but you little think how you starve their immortal souls! Mr Brocklehurst again paused—perhaps overcome by his feelings. Miss Temple had looked down when he first began to speak to her but she now gazed straight before her and her face naturally pale as marble appeared to be assuming also the coldness and fixity of that material especially her mouth closed as if it would have required a sculptor’s chisel to open it and her brow settled gradually into petrified severity. Meantime Mr Brocklehurst standing on the hearth with his hands behind his back majestically surveyed the whole school. Suddenly his eye gave a blink as if it had met something that either dazzled or shocked its pupil turning he said in more rapid accents than he had hitherto used— Miss Temple Miss Temple what—what is that girl with curled hair? Red hair ma’am curled—curled all over? And extending his cane he pointed to the awful object his hand shaking as he did so. It is Julia Severn replied Miss Temple very quietly. Julia Severn ma’am! And why has she or any other curled hair? Why in defiance of every precept and principle of this house does she conform to the world so openly—here in an evangelical charitable establishment—as to wear her hair one mass of curls? Julia’s hair curls naturally returned Miss Temple still more quietly. Naturally! Yes but we are not to conform to nature I wish these girls to be the children of Grace and why that abundance? I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely modestly plainly. Miss Temple that girl’s hair must be cut off entirely I will send a barber to-morrow and I see others who have far too much of the excrescence—that tall girl tell her to turn round. Tell all the first form to rise up and direct their faces to the wall. Miss Temple passed her handkerchief over her lips as if to smooth away the involuntary smile that curled them she gave the order however and when the first class could take in what was required of them they obeyed. Leaning a little back on my bench I could see the looks and grimaces with which they commented on this manoeuvre it was a pity Mr Brocklehurst could not see them too he would perhaps have felt that whatever he might do with the outside of the cup and platter the inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined. He scrutinised the reverse of these living medals some five minutes then pronounced sentence. These words fell like the knell of doom— All those top-knots must be cut off. Miss Temple seemed to remonstrate. Madam he pursued I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and sobriety not with braided hair and costly apparel and each of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have woven these I repeat must be cut off think of the time wasted of— Mr Brocklehurst was here interrupted three other visitors ladies now entered the room. They ought to have come a little sooner to have heard his lecture on dress for they were splendidly attired in velvet silk and furs. The two younger of the trio fine girls of sixteen and seventeen had grey beaver hats then in fashion shaded with ostrich plumes and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses elaborately curled the elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl trimmed with ermine and she wore a false front of French curls. These ladies were deferentially received by Miss Temple as Mrs and the Misses Brocklehurst and conducted to seats of honour at the top of the room. It seems they had come in the carriage with their reverend relative and had been conducting a rummaging scrutiny of the room upstairs while he transacted business with the housekeeper questioned the laundress and lectured the superintendent. They now proceeded to address divers remarks and reproofs to Miss Smith who was charged with the care of the linen and the inspection of the dormitories but I had no time to listen to what they said other matters called off and enchanted my attention. Hitherto while gathering up the discourse of Mr Brocklehurst and Miss Temple I had not at the same time neglected precautions to secure my personal safety which I thought would be effected if I could only elude observation. To this end I had sat well back on the form and while seeming to be busy with my sum had held my slate in such a manner as to conceal my face I might have escaped notice had not my treacherous slate somehow happened to slip from my hand and falling with an obtrusive crash directly drawn every eye upon me I knew it was all over now and as I stooped to pick up the two fragments of slate I rallied my forces for the worst. It came. A careless girl! said Mr Brocklehurst and immediately after—It is the new pupil I perceive. And before I could draw breath I must not forget I have a word to say respecting her. Then aloud how loud it seemed to me! Let the child who broke her slate come forward! Of my own accord I could not have stirred I was paralysed but the two great girls who sat on each side of me set me on my legs and pushed me towards the dread judge and then Miss Temple gently assisted me to his very feet and I caught her whispered counsel— Don’t be afraid Jane I saw it was an accident you shall not be punished. The kind whisper went to my heart like a dagger. Another minute and she will despise me for a hypocrite thought I and an impulse of fury against Reed Brocklehurst and Co. bounded in my pulses at the conviction. I was no Helen Burns. Fetch that stool said Mr Brocklehurst pointing to a very high one from which a monitor had just risen it was brought. Place the child upon it. And I was placed there by whom I don’t know I was in no condition to note particulars I was only aware that they had hoisted me up to the height of Mr Brocklehurst’s nose that he was within a yard of me and that a spread of shot orange and purple silk pelisses and a cloud of silvery plumage extended and waved below me. Mr Brocklehurst hemmed. Ladies said he turning to his family Miss Temple teachers and children you all see this girl? Of course they did for I felt their eyes directed like burning-glasses against my scorched skin. You see she is yet young you observe she possesses the ordinary form of childhood God has graciously given her the shape that He has given to all of us no signal deformity points her out as a marked character. Who would think that the Evil One had already found a servant and agent in her? Yet such I grieve to say is the case. A pause—in which I began to steady the palsy of my nerves and to feel that the Rubicon was passed and that the trial no longer to be shirked must be firmly sustained. My dear children pursued the black marble clergyman with pathos this is a sad a melancholy occasion for it becomes my duty to warn you that this girl who might be one of God’s own lambs is a little castaway not a member of the true flock but evidently an interloper and an alien. You must be on your guard against her you must shun her example if necessary avoid her company exclude her from your sports and shut her out from your converse. Teachers you must watch her keep your eyes on her movements weigh well her words scrutinise her actions punish her body to save her soul if indeed such salvation be possible for my tongue falters while I tell it this girl this child the native of a Christian land worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut—this girl is—a liar! Now came a pause of ten minutes during which I by this time in perfect possession of my wits observed all the female Brocklehursts produce their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics while the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro and the two younger ones whispered How shocking! Mr Brocklehurst resumed. This I learned from her benefactress from the pious and charitable lady who adopted her in her orphan state reared her as her own daughter and whose kindness whose generosity the unhappy girl repaid by an ingratitude so bad so dreadful that at last her excellent patroness was obliged to separate her from her own young ones fearful lest her vicious example should contaminate their purity she has sent her here to be healed even as the Jews of old sent their diseased to the troubled pool of Bethesda and teachers superintendent I beg of you not to allow the waters to stagnate round her. With this sublime conclusion Mr Brocklehurst adjusted the top button of his surtout muttered something to his family who rose bowed to Miss Temple and then all the great people sailed in state from the room. Turning at the door my judge said— Let her stand half-an-hour longer on that stool and let no one speak to her during the remainder of the day. There was I then mounted aloft I who had said I could not bear the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. What my sensations were no language can describe but just as they all rose stifling my breath and constricting my throat a girl came up and passed me in passing she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new feeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr a hero had passed a slave or victim and imparted strength in the transit. I mastered the rising hysteria lifted up my head and took a firm stand on the stool. Helen Burns asked some slight question about her work of Miss Smith was chidden for the triviality of the inquiry returned to her place and smiled at me as she again went by. What a smile! I remember it now and I know that it was the effluence of fine intellect of true courage it lit up her marked lineaments her thin face her sunken grey eye like a reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet at that moment Helen Burns wore on her arm the untidy badge scarcely an hour ago I had heard her condemned by Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water on the morrow because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out. Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet and eyes like Miss Scatcherd’s can only see those minute defects and are blind to the full brightness of the orb. ', 'Ere the half-hour ended five o’clock struck school was dismissed and all were gone into the refectory to tea. I now ventured to descend it was deep dusk I retired into a corner and sat down on the floor. The spell by which I had been so far supported began to dissolve reaction took place and soon so overwhelming was the grief that seized me I sank prostrate with my face to the ground. Now I wept Helen Burns was not here nothing sustained me left to myself I abandoned myself and my tears watered the boards. I had meant to be so good and to do so much at Lowood to make so many friends to earn respect and win affection. Already I had made visible progress that very morning I had reached the head of my class Miss Miller had praised me warmly Miss Temple had smiled approbation she had promised to teach me drawing and to let me learn French if I continued to make similar improvement two months longer and then I was well received by my fellow-pupils treated as an equal by those of my own age and not molested by any now here I lay again crushed and trodden on and could I ever rise more? Never I thought and ardently I wished to die. While sobbing out this wish in broken accents some one approached I started up—again Helen Burns was near me the fading fires just showed her coming up the long vacant room she brought my coffee and bread. Come eat something she said but I put both away from me feeling as if a drop or a crumb would have choked me in my present condition. Helen regarded me probably with surprise I could not now abate my agitation though I tried hard I continued to weep aloud. She sat down on the ground near me embraced her knees with her arms and rested her head upon them in that attitude she remained silent as an Indian. I was the first who spoke— Helen why do you stay with a girl whom everybody believes to be a liar? Everybody Jane? Why there are only eighty people who have heard you called so and the world contains hundreds of millions. But what have I to do with millions? The eighty I know despise me. Jane you are mistaken probably not one in the school either despises or dislikes you many I am sure pity you much. How can they pity me after what Mr Brocklehurst has said? Mr Brocklehurst is not a god nor is he even a great and admired man he is little liked here he never took steps to make himself liked. Had he treated you as an especial favourite you would have found enemies declared or covert all around you as it is the greater number would offer you sympathy if they dared. Teachers and pupils may look coldly on you for a day or two but friendly feelings are concealed in their hearts and if you persevere in doing well these feelings will ere long appear so much the more evidently for their temporary suppression. Besides Jane—she paused. Well Helen? said I putting my hand into hers she chafed my fingers gently to warm them and went on— If all the world hated you and believed you wicked while your own conscience approved you and absolved you from guilt you would not be without friends. No I know I should think well of myself but that is not enough if others don’t love me I would rather die than live—I cannot bear to be solitary and hated Helen. Look here to gain some real affection from you or Miss Temple or any other whom I truly love I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken or to let a bull toss me or to stand behind a kicking horse and let it dash its hoof at my chest— Hush Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings you are too impulsive too vehement the sovereign hand that created your frame and put life into it has provided you with other resources than your feeble self or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth and besides the race of men there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits that world is round us for it is everywhere and those spirits watch us for they are commissioned to guard us and if we were dying in pain and shame if scorn smote us on all sides and hatred crushed us angels see our tortures recognise our innocence if innocent we be as I know you are of this charge which Mr Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at second-hand from Mrs Reed for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why then should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress when life is so soon over and death is so certain an entrance to happiness—to glory? I was silent Helen had calmed me but in the tranquillity she imparted there was an alloy of inexpressible sadness. I felt the impression of woe as she spoke but I could not tell whence it came and when having done speaking she breathed a little fast and coughed a short cough I momentarily forgot my own sorrows to yield to a vague concern for her. Resting my head on Helen’s shoulder I put my arms round her waist she drew me to her and we reposed in silence. We had not sat long thus when another person came in. Some heavy clouds swept from the sky by a rising wind had left the moon bare and her light streaming in through a window near shone full both on us and on the approaching figure which we at once recognised as Miss Temple. I came on purpose to find you Jane Eyre said she I want you in my room and as Helen Burns is with you she may come too. We went following the superintendent’s guidance we had to thread some intricate passages and mount a staircase before we reached her apartment it contained a good fire and looked cheerful. Miss Temple told Helen Burns to be seated in a low arm-chair on one side of the hearth and herself taking another she called me to her side. Is it all over? she asked looking down at my face. Have you cried your grief away? I am afraid I never shall do that. Why? Because I have been wrongly accused and you ma’am and everybody else will now think me wicked. We shall think you what you prove yourself to be my child. Continue to act as a good girl and you will satisfy us. Shall I Miss Temple? You will said she passing her arm round me. And now tell me who is the lady whom Mr Brocklehurst called your benefactress? Mrs Reed my uncle’s wife. My uncle is dead and he left me to her care. Did she not then adopt you of her own accord? No ma’am she was sorry to have to do it but my uncle as I have often heard the servants say got her to promise before he died that she would always keep me. Well now Jane you know or at least I will tell you that when a criminal is accused he is always allowed to speak in his own defence. You have been charged with falsehood defend yourself to me as well as you can. Say whatever your memory suggests is true but add nothing and exaggerate nothing. I resolved in the depth of my heart that I would be most moderate—most correct and having reflected a few minutes in order to arrange coherently what I had to say I told her all the story of my sad childhood. Exhausted by emotion my language was more subdued than it generally was when it developed that sad theme and mindful of Helen’s warnings against the indulgence of resentment I infused into the narrative far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary. Thus restrained and simplified it sounded more credible I felt as I went on that Miss Temple fully believed me. In the course of the tale I had mentioned Mr Lloyd as having come to see me after the fit for I never forgot the to me frightful episode of the red-room in detailing which my excitement was sure in some degree to break bounds for nothing could soften in my recollection the spasm of agony which clutched my heart when Mrs Reed spurned my wild supplication for pardon and locked me a second time in the dark and haunted chamber. I had finished Miss Temple regarded me a few minutes in silence she then said— I know something of Mr Lloyd I shall write to him if his reply agrees with your statement you shall be publicly cleared from every imputation to me Jane you are clear now. She kissed me and still keeping me at her side where I was well contented to stand for I derived a child’s pleasure from the contemplation of her face her dress her one or two ornaments her white forehead her clustered and shining curls and beaming dark eyes she proceeded to address Helen Burns. How are you to-night Helen? Have you coughed much to-day? Not quite so much I think ma’am. And the pain in your chest? It is a little better. Miss Temple got up took her hand and examined her pulse then she returned to her own seat as she resumed it I heard her sigh low. She was pensive a few minutes then rousing herself she said cheerfully— But you two are my visitors to-night I must treat you as such. She rang her bell. Barbara she said to the servant who answered it I have not yet had tea bring the tray and place cups for these two young ladies. And a tray was soon brought. How pretty to my eyes did the china cups and bright teapot look placed on the little round table near the fire! How fragrant was the steam of the beverage and the scent of the toast! of which however I to my dismay for I was beginning to be hungry discerned only a very small portion Miss Temple discerned it too. Barbara said she can you not bring a little more bread and butter? There is not enough for three. Barbara went out she returned soon— Madam Mrs Harden says she has sent up the usual quantity. Mrs Harden be it observed was the housekeeper a woman after Mr Brocklehurst’s own heart made up of equal parts of whalebone and iron. Oh very well! returned Miss Temple we must make it do Barbara I suppose. And as the girl withdrew she added smiling Fortunately I have it in my power to supply deficiencies for this once. Having invited Helen and me to approach the table and placed before each of us a cup of tea with one delicious but thin morsel of toast she got up unlocked a drawer and taking from it a parcel wrapped in paper disclosed presently to our eyes a good-sized seed-cake. I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you said she but as there is so little toast you must have it now and she proceeded to cut slices with a generous hand. We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia and not the least delight of the entertainment was the smile of gratification with which our hostess regarded us as we satisfied our famished appetites on the delicate fare she liberally supplied. Tea over and the tray removed she again summoned us to the fire we sat one on each side of her and now a conversation followed between her and Helen which it was indeed a privilege to be admitted to hear. Miss Temple had always something of serenity in her air of state in her mien of refined propriety in her language which precluded deviation into the ardent the excited the eager something which chastened the pleasure of those who looked on her and listened to her by a controlling sense of awe and such was my feeling now but as to Helen Burns I was struck with wonder. The refreshing meal the brilliant fire the presence and kindness of her beloved instructress or perhaps more than all these something in her own unique mind had roused her powers within her. They woke they kindled first they glowed in the bright tint of her cheek which till this hour I had never seen but pale and bloodless then they shone in the liquid lustre of her eyes which had suddenly acquired a beauty more singular than that of Miss Temple’s—a beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash nor pencilled brow but of meaning of movement of radiance. Then her soul sat on her lips and language flowed from what source I cannot tell. Has a girl of fourteen a heart large enough vigorous enough to hold the swelling spring of pure full fervid eloquence? Such was the characteristic of Helen’s discourse on that to me memorable evening her spirit seemed hastening to live within a very brief span as much as many live during a protracted existence. They conversed of things I had never heard of of nations and times past of countries far away of secrets of nature discovered or guessed at they spoke of books how many they had read! What stores of knowledge they possessed! Then they seemed so familiar with French names and French authors but my amazement reached its climax when Miss Temple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall the Latin her father had taught her and taking a book from a shelf bade her read and construe a page of Virgil and Helen obeyed my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding line. She had scarcely finished ere the bell announced bedtime! no delay could be admitted Miss Temple embraced us both saying as she drew us to her heart— God bless you my children! Helen she held a little longer than me she let her go more reluctantly it was Helen her eye followed to the door it was for her she a second time breathed a sad sigh for her she wiped a tear from her cheek. On reaching the bedroom we heard the voice of Miss Scatcherd she was examining drawers she had just pulled out Helen Burns’s and when we entered Helen was greeted with a sharp reprimand and told that to-morrow she should have half-a-dozen of untidily folded articles pinned to her shoulder. My things were indeed in shameful disorder murmured Helen to me in a low voice I intended to have arranged them but I forgot. Next morning Miss Scatcherd wrote in conspicuous characters on a piece of pasteboard the word Slattern and bound it like a phylactery round Helen’s large mild intelligent and benign-looking forehead. She wore it till evening patient unresentful regarding it as a deserved punishment. The moment Miss Scatcherd withdrew after afternoon school I ran to Helen tore it off and thrust it into the fire the fury of which she was incapable had been burning in my soul all day and tears hot and large had continually been scalding my cheek for the spectacle of her sad resignation gave me an intolerable pain at the heart. About a week subsequently to the incidents above narrated Miss Temple who had written to Mr Lloyd received his answer it appeared that what he said went to corroborate my account. Miss Temple having assembled the whole school announced that inquiry had been made into the charges alleged against Jane Eyre and that she was most happy to be able to pronounce her completely cleared from every imputation. The teachers then shook hands with me and kissed me and a murmur of pleasure ran through the ranks of my companions. Thus relieved of a grievous load I from that hour set to work afresh resolved to pioneer my way through every difficulty I toiled hard and my success was proportionate to my efforts my memory not naturally tenacious improved with practice exercise sharpened my wits in a few weeks I was promoted to a higher class in less than two months I was allowed to commence French and drawing. I learned the first two tenses of the verb Etre and sketched my first cottage whose walls by-the-bye outrivalled in slope those of the leaning tower of Pisa on the same day. That night on going to bed I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes or white bread and new milk with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings I feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings which I saw in the dark all the work of my own hands freely pencilled houses and trees picturesque rocks and ruins Cuyp-like groups of cattle sweet paintings of butterflies hovering over unblown roses of birds picking at ripe cherries of wren’s nests enclosing pearl-like eggs wreathed about with young ivy sprays. I examined too in thought the possibility of my ever being able to translate currently a certain little French story which Madame Pierrot had that day shown me nor was that problem solved to my satisfaction ere I fell sweetly asleep. Well has Solomon said—Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. I would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for Gateshead and its daily luxuries. ', 'But the privations or rather the hardships of Lowood lessened. Spring drew on she was indeed already come the frosts of winter had ceased its snows were melted its cutting winds ameliorated. My wretched feet flayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of January began to heal and subside under the gentler breathings of April the nights and mornings no longer by their Canadian temperature froze the very blood in our veins we could now endure the play-hour passed in the garden sometimes on a sunny day it began even to be pleasant and genial and a greenness grew over those brown beds which freshening daily suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night and left each morning brighter traces of her steps. Flowers peeped out amongst the leaves snow-drops crocuses purple auriculas and golden-eyed pansies. On Thursday afternoons half-holidays we now took walks and found still sweeter flowers opening by the wayside under the hedges. I discovered too that a great pleasure an enjoyment which the horizon only bounded lay all outside the high and spike-guarded walls of our garden this pleasure consisted in prospect of noble summits girdling a great hill-hollow rich in verdure and shadow in a bright beck full of dark stones and sparkling eddies. How different had this scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky of winter stiffened in frost shrouded with snow!—when mists as chill as death wandered to the impulse of east winds along those purple peaks and rolled down ing and holm till they blended with the frozen fog of the beck! That beck itself was then a torrent turbid and curbless it tore asunder the wood and sent a raving sound through the air often thickened with wild rain or whirling sleet and for the forest on its banks that showed only ranks of skeletons. April advanced to May a bright serene May it was days of blue sky placid sunshine and soft western or southern gales filled up its duration. And now vegetation matured with vigour Lowood shook loose its tresses it became all green all flowery its great elm ash and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses unnumbered varieties of moss filled its hollows and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre. All this I enjoyed often and fully free unwatched and almost alone for this unwonted liberty and pleasure there was a cause to which it now becomes my task to advert. Have I not described a pleasant site for a dwelling when I speak of it as bosomed in hill and wood and rising from the verge of a stream? Assuredly pleasant enough but whether healthy or not is another question. That forest-dell where Lowood lay was the cradle of fog and fog-bred pestilence which quickening with the quickening spring crept into the Orphan Asylum breathed typhus through its crowded schoolroom and dormitory and ere May arrived transformed the seminary into an hospital. Semi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the pupils to receive infection forty-five out of the eighty girls lay ill at one time. Classes were broken up rules relaxed. The few who continued well were allowed almost unlimited license because the medical attendant insisted on the necessity of frequent exercise to keep them in health and had it been otherwise no one had leisure to watch or restrain them. Miss Temple’s whole attention was absorbed by the patients she lived in the sick-room never quitting it except to snatch a few hours’ rest at night. The teachers were fully occupied with packing up and making other necessary preparations for the departure of those girls who were fortunate enough to have friends and relations able and willing to remove them from the seat of contagion. Many already smitten went home only to die some died at the school and were buried quietly and quickly the nature of the malady forbidding delay. While disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood and death its frequent visitor while there was gloom and fear within its walls while its rooms and passages steamed with hospital smells the drug and the pastille striving vainly to overcome the effluvia of mortality that bright May shone unclouded over the bold hills and beautiful woodland out of doors. Its garden too glowed with flowers hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees lilies had opened tulips and roses were in bloom the borders of the little beds were gay with pink thrift and crimson double daisies the sweetbriars gave out morning and evening their scent of spice and apples and these fragrant treasures were all useless for most of the inmates of Lowood except to furnish now and then a handful of herbs and blossoms to put in a coffin. But I and the rest who continued well enjoyed fully the beauties of the scene and season they let us ramble in the wood like gipsies from morning till night we did what we liked went where we liked we lived better too. Mr Brocklehurst and his family never came near Lowood now household matters were not scrutinised into the cross housekeeper was gone driven away by the fear of infection her successor who had been matron at the Lowton Dispensary unused to the ways of her new abode provided with comparative liberality. Besides there were fewer to feed the sick could eat little our breakfast-basins were better filled when there was no time to prepare a regular dinner which often happened she would give us a large piece of cold pie or a thick slice of bread and cheese and this we carried away with us to the wood where we each chose the spot we liked best and dined sumptuously. My favourite seat was a smooth and broad stone rising white and dry from the very middle of the beck and only to be got at by wading through the water a feat I accomplished barefoot. The stone was just broad enough to accommodate comfortably another girl and me at that time my chosen comrade—one Mary Ann Wilson a shrewd observant personage whose society I took pleasure in partly because she was witty and original and partly because she had a manner which set me at my ease. Some years older than I she knew more of the world and could tell me many things I liked to hear with her my curiosity found gratification to my faults also she gave ample indulgence never imposing curb or rein on anything I said. She had a turn for narrative I for analysis she liked to inform I to question so we got on swimmingly together deriving much entertainment if not much improvement from our mutual intercourse. And where meantime was Helen Burns? Why did I not spend these sweet days of liberty with her? Had I forgotten her? or was I so worthless as to have grown tired of her pure society? Surely the Mary Ann Wilson I have mentioned was inferior to my first acquaintance she could only tell me amusing stories and reciprocate any racy and pungent gossip I chose to indulge in while if I have spoken truth of Helen she was qualified to give those who enjoyed the privilege of her converse a taste of far higher things. True reader and I knew and felt this and though I am a defective being with many faults and few redeeming points yet I never tired of Helen Burns nor ever ceased to cherish for her a sentiment of attachment as strong tender and respectful as any that ever animated my heart. How could it be otherwise when Helen at all times and under all circumstances evinced for me a quiet and faithful friendship which ill-humour never soured nor irritation never troubled? But Helen was ill at present for some weeks she had been removed from my sight to I knew not what room upstairs. She was not I was told in the hospital portion of the house with the fever patients for her complaint was consumption not typhus and by consumption I in my ignorance understood something mild which time and care would be sure to alleviate. I was confirmed in this idea by the fact of her once or twice coming downstairs on very warm sunny afternoons and being taken by Miss Temple into the garden but on these occasions I was not allowed to go and speak to her I only saw her from the schoolroom window and then not distinctly for she was much wrapped up and sat at a distance under the verandah. One evening in the beginning of June I had stayed out very late with Mary Ann in the wood we had as usual separated ourselves from the others and had wandered far so far that we lost our way and had to ask it at a lonely cottage where a man and woman lived who looked after a herd of half-wild swine that fed on the mast in the wood. When we got back it was after moonrise a pony which we knew to be the surgeon’s was standing at the garden door. Mary Ann remarked that she supposed some one must be very ill as Mr Bates had been sent for at that time of the evening. She went into the house I stayed behind a few minutes to plant in my garden a handful of roots I had dug up in the forest and which I feared would wither if I left them till the morning. This done I lingered yet a little longer the flowers smelt so sweet as the dew fell it was such a pleasant evening so serene so warm the still glowing west promised so fairly another fine day on the morrow the moon rose with such majesty in the grave east. I was noting these things and enjoying them as a child might when it entered my mind as it had never done before— How sad to be lying now on a sick bed and to be in danger of dying! This world is pleasant—it would be dreary to be called from it and to have to go who knows where? And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell and for the first time it recoiled baffled and for the first time glancing behind on each side and before it it saw all round an unfathomed gulf it felt the one point where it stood—the present all the rest was formless cloud and vacant depth and it shuddered at the thought of tottering and plunging amid that chaos. While pondering this new idea I heard the front door open Mr Bates came out and with him was a nurse. After she had seen him mount his horse and depart she was about to close the door but I ran up to her. How is Helen Burns? Very poorly was the answer. Is it her Mr Bates has been to see? Yes. And what does he say about her? He says she’ll not be here long. This phrase uttered in my hearing yesterday would have only conveyed the notion that she was about to be removed to Northumberland to her own home. I should not have suspected that it meant she was dying but I knew instantly now! It opened clear on my comprehension that Helen Burns was numbering her last days in this world and that she was going to be taken to the region of spirits if such region there were. I experienced a shock of horror then a strong thrill of grief then a desire—a necessity to see her and I asked in what room she lay. She is in Miss Temple’s room said the nurse. May I go up and speak to her? Oh no child! It is not likely and now it is time for you to come in you’ll catch the fever if you stop out when the dew is falling. The nurse closed the front door I went in by the side entrance which led to the schoolroom I was just in time it was nine o’clock and Miss Miller was calling the pupils to go to bed. It might be two hours later probably near eleven when I—not having been able to fall asleep and deeming from the perfect silence of the dormitory that my companions were all wrapt in profound repose—rose softly put on my frock over my night-dress and without shoes crept from the apartment and set off in quest of Miss Temple’s room. It was quite at the other end of the house but I knew my way and the light of the unclouded summer moon entering here and there at passage windows enabled me to find it without difficulty. An odour of camphor and burnt vinegar warned me when I came near the fever room and I passed its door quickly fearful lest the nurse who sat up all night should hear me. I dreaded being discovered and sent back for I must see Helen—I must embrace her before she died—I must give her one last kiss exchange with her one last word. Having descended a staircase traversed a portion of the house below and succeeded in opening and shutting without noise two doors I reached another flight of steps these I mounted and then just opposite to me was Miss Temple’s room. A light shone through the keyhole and from under the door a profound stillness pervaded the vicinity. Coming near I found the door slightly ajar probably to admit some fresh air into the close abode of sickness. Indisposed to hesitate and full of impatient impulses—soul and senses quivering with keen throes—I put it back and looked in. My eye sought Helen and feared to find death. Close by Miss Temple’s bed and half covered with its white curtains there stood a little crib. I saw the outline of a form under the clothes but the face was hid by the hangings the nurse I had spoken to in the garden sat in an easy-chair asleep an unsnuffed candle burnt dimly on the table. Miss Temple was not to be seen I knew afterwards that she had been called to a delirious patient in the fever-room. I advanced then paused by the crib side my hand was on the curtain but I preferred speaking before I withdrew it. I still recoiled at the dread of seeing a corpse. Helen! I whispered softly are you awake? She stirred herself put back the curtain and I saw her face pale wasted but quite composed she looked so little changed that my fear was instantly dissipated. Can it be you Jane? she asked in her own gentle voice. Oh! I thought she is not going to die they are mistaken she could not speak and look so calmly if she were. I got on to her crib and kissed her her forehead was cold and her cheek both cold and thin and so were her hand and wrist but she smiled as of old. Why are you come here Jane? It is past eleven o’clock I heard it strike some minutes since. I came to see you Helen I heard you were very ill and I could not sleep till I had spoken to you. You came to bid me good-bye then you are just in time probably. Are you going somewhere Helen? Are you going home? Yes to my long home—my last home. No no Helen! I stopped distressed. While I tried to devour my tears a fit of coughing seized Helen it did not however wake the nurse when it was over she lay some minutes exhausted then she whispered— Jane your little feet are bare lie down and cover yourself with my quilt. I did so she put her arm over me and I nestled close to her. After a long silence she resumed still whispering— I am very happy Jane and when you hear that I am dead you must be sure and not grieve there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day and the illness which is removing me is not painful it is gentle and gradual my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me much I have only a father and he is lately married and will not miss me. By dying young I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world I should have been continually at fault. But where are you going to Helen? Can you see? Do you know? I believe I have faith I am going to God. Where is God? What is God? My Maker and yours who will never destroy what He created. I rely implicitly on His power and confide wholly in His goodness I count the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to Him reveal Him to me. You are sure then Helen that there is such a place as heaven and that our souls can get to it when we die? I am sure there is a future state I believe God is good I can resign my immortal part to Him without any misgiving. God is my father God is my friend I love Him I believe He loves me. And shall I see you again Helen when I die? You will come to the same region of happiness be received by the same mighty universal Parent no doubt dear Jane. Again I questioned but this time only in thought. Where is that region? Does it exist? And I clasped my arms closer round Helen she seemed dearer to me than ever I felt as if I could not let her go I lay with my face hidden on her neck. Presently she said in the sweetest tone— How comfortable I am! That last fit of coughing has tired me a little I feel as if I could sleep but don’t leave me Jane I like to have you near me. I’ll stay with you dear Helen no one shall take me away. Are you warm darling? Yes. Good-night Jane. Good-night Helen. She kissed me and I her and we both soon slumbered. When I awoke it was day an unusual movement roused me I looked up I was in somebody’s arms the nurse held me she was carrying me through the passage back to the dormitory. I was not reprimanded for leaving my bed people had something else to think about no explanation was afforded then to my many questions but a day or two afterwards I learned that Miss Temple on returning to her own room at dawn had found me laid in the little crib my face against Helen Burns’s shoulder my arms round her neck. I was asleep and Helen was—dead. Her grave is in Brocklebridge churchyard for fifteen years after her death it was only covered by a grassy mound but now a grey marble tablet marks the spot inscribed with her name and the word Resurgam. ', 'Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant existence to the first ten years of my life I have given almost as many chapters. But this is not to be a regular autobiography I am only bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some degree of interest therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost in silence a few lines only are necessary to keep up the links of connection. When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation at Lowood it gradually disappeared from thence but not till its virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on the school. Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge and by degrees various facts came out which excited public indignation in a high degree. The unhealthy nature of the site the quantity and quality of the children’s food the brackish fetid water used in its preparation the pupils’ wretched clothing and accommodations—all these things were discovered and the discovery produced a result mortifying to Mr Brocklehurst but beneficial to the institution. Several wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed largely for the erection of a more convenient building in a better situation new regulations were made improvements in diet and clothing introduced the funds of the school were intrusted to the management of a committee. Mr Brocklehurst who from his wealth and family connections could not be overlooked still retained the post of treasurer but he was aided in the discharge of his duties by gentlemen of rather more enlarged and sympathising minds his office of inspector too was shared by those who knew how to combine reason with strictness comfort with economy compassion with uprightness. The school thus improved became in time a truly useful and noble institution. I remained an inmate of its walls after its regeneration for eight years six as pupil and two as teacher and in both capacities I bear my testimony to its value and importance. During these eight years my life was uniform but not unhappy because it was not inactive. I had the means of an excellent education placed within my reach a fondness for some of my studies and a desire to excel in all together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers especially such as I loved urged me on I availed myself fully of the advantages offered me. In time I rose to be the first girl of the first class then I was invested with the office of teacher which I discharged with zeal for two years but at the end of that time I altered. Miss Temple through all changes had thus far continued superintendent of the seminary to her instruction I owed the best part of my acquirements her friendship and society had been my continual solace she had stood me in the stead of mother governess and latterly companion. At this period she married removed with her husband a clergyman an excellent man almost worthy of such a wife to a distant county and consequently was lost to me. From the day she left I was no longer the same with her was gone every settled feeling every association that had made Lowood in some degree a home to me. I had imbibed from her something of her nature and much of her habits more harmonious thoughts what seemed better regulated feelings had become the inmates of my mind. I had given in allegiance to duty and order I was quiet I believed I was content to the eyes of others usually even to my own I appeared a disciplined and subdued character. But destiny in the shape of the Rev. Mr Nasmyth came between me and Miss Temple I saw her in her travelling dress step into a post-chaise shortly after the marriage ceremony I watched the chaise mount the hill and disappear beyond its brow and then retired to my own room and there spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday granted in honour of the occasion. I walked about the chamber most of the time. I imagined myself only to be regretting my loss and thinking how to repair it but when my reflections were concluded and I looked up and found that the afternoon was gone and evening far advanced another discovery dawned on me namely that in the interval I had undergone a transforming process that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple—or rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity—and that now I was left in my natural element and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn but rather as if a motive were gone it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me but the reason for tranquillity was no more. My world had for some years been in Lowood my experience had been of its rules and systems now I remembered that the real world was wide and that a varied field of hopes and fears of sensations and excitements awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils. I went to my window opened it and looked out. There were the two wings of the building there was the garden there were the skirts of Lowood there was the hilly horizon. My eye passed all other objects to rest on those most remote the blue peaks it was those I longed to surmount all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed prison-ground exile limits. I traced the white road winding round the base of one mountain and vanishing in a gorge between two how I longed to follow it farther! I recalled the time when I had travelled that very road in a coach I remembered descending that hill at twilight an age seemed to have elapsed since the day which brought me first to Lowood and I had never quitted it since. My vacations had all been spent at school Mrs Reed had never sent for me to Gateshead neither she nor any of her family had ever been to visit me. I had had no communication by letter or message with the outer world school-rules school-duties school-habits and notions and voices and faces and phrases and costumes and preferences and antipathies—such was what I knew of existence. And now I felt that it was not enough I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty for liberty I gasped for liberty I uttered a prayer it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication for change stimulus that petition too seemed swept off into vague space Then I cried half desperate grant me at least a new servitude! Here a bell ringing the hour of supper called me downstairs. I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till bedtime even then a teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me from the subject to which I longed to recur by a prolonged effusion of small talk. How I wished sleep would silence her. It seemed as if could I but go back to the idea which had last entered my mind as I stood at the window some inventive suggestion would rise for my relief. Miss Gryce snored at last she was a heavy Welshwoman and till now her habitual nasal strains had never been regarded by me in any other light than as a nuisance to-night I hailed the first deep notes with satisfaction I was debarrassed of interruption my half-effaced thought instantly revived. A new servitude! There is something in that I soliloquised mentally be it understood I did not talk aloud. I know there is because it does not sound too sweet it is not like such words as Liberty Excitement Enjoyment delightful sounds truly but no more than sounds for me and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere waste of time to listen to them. But Servitude! That must be matter of fact. Any one may serve I have served here eight years now all I want is to serve elsewhere. Can I not get so much of my own will? Is not the thing feasible? Yes—yes—the end is not so difficult if I had only a brain active enough to ferret out the means of attaining it. I sat up in bed by way of arousing this said brain it was a chilly night I covered my shoulders with a shawl and then I proceeded to think again with all my might. What do I want? A new place in a new house amongst new faces under new circumstances I want this because it is of no use wanting anything better. How do people do to get a new place? They apply to friends I suppose I have no friends. There are many others who have no friends who must look about for themselves and be their own helpers and what is their resource? I could not tell nothing answered me I then ordered my brain to find a response and quickly. It worked and worked faster I felt the pulses throb in my head and temples but for nearly an hour it worked in chaos and no result came of its efforts. Feverish with vain labour I got up and took a turn in the room undrew the curtain noted a star or two shivered with cold and again crept to bed. A kind fairy in my absence had surely dropped the required suggestion on my pillow for as I lay down it came quietly and naturally to my mind—Those who want situations advertise you must advertise in the ——shire Herald. How? I know nothing about advertising. Replies rose smooth and prompt now— You must enclose the advertisement and the money to pay for it under a cover directed to the editor of the Herald you must put it the first opportunity you have into the post at Lowton answers must be addressed to J.E. at the post-office there you can go and inquire in about a week after you send your letter if any are come and act accordingly. This scheme I went over twice thrice it was then digested in my mind I had it in a clear practical form I felt satisfied and fell asleep. With earliest day I was up I had my advertisement written enclosed and directed before the bell rang to rouse the school it ran thus— A young lady accustomed to tuition had I not been a teacher two years? is desirous of meeting with a situation in a private family where the children are under fourteen I thought that as I was barely eighteen it would not do to undertake the guidance of pupils nearer my own age. She is qualified to teach the usual branches of a good English education together with French Drawing and Music in those days reader this now narrow catalogue of accomplishments would have been held tolerably comprehensive. Address J.E. Post-office Lowton ——shire. This document remained locked in my drawer all day after tea I asked leave of the new superintendent to go to Lowton in order to perform some small commissions for myself and one or two of my fellow-teachers permission was readily granted I went. It was a walk of two miles and the evening was wet but the days were still long I visited a shop or two slipped the letter into the post-office and came back through heavy rain with streaming garments but with a relieved heart. The succeeding week seemed long it came to an end at last however like all sublunary things and once more towards the close of a pleasant autumn day I found myself afoot on the road to Lowton. A picturesque track it was by the way lying along the side of the beck and through the sweetest curves of the dale but that day I thought more of the letters that might or might not be awaiting me at the little burgh whither I was bound than of the charms of lea and water. My ostensible errand on this occasion was to get measured for a pair of shoes so I discharged that business first and when it was done I stepped across the clean and quiet little street from the shoemaker’s to the post-office it was kept by an old dame who wore horn spectacles on her nose and black mittens on her hands. Are there any letters for J.E.? I asked. She peered at me over her spectacles and then she opened a drawer and fumbled among its contents for a long time so long that my hopes began to falter. At last having held a document before her glasses for nearly five minutes she presented it across the counter accompanying the act by another inquisitive and mistrustful glance—it was for J.E. Is there only one? I demanded. There are no more said she and I put it in my pocket and turned my face homeward I could not open it then rules obliged me to be back by eight and it was already half-past seven. Various duties awaited me on my arrival I had to sit with the girls during their hour of study then it was my turn to read prayers to see them to bed afterwards I supped with the other teachers. Even when we finally retired for the night the inevitable Miss Gryce was still my companion we had only a short end of candle in our candlestick and I dreaded lest she should talk till it was all burnt out fortunately however the heavy supper she had eaten produced a soporific effect she was already snoring before I had finished undressing. There still remained an inch of candle I now took out my letter the seal was an initial F. I broke it the contents were brief. If J.E. who advertised in the ——shire Herald of last Thursday possesses the acquirements mentioned and if she is in a position to give satisfactory references as to character and competency a situation can be offered her where there is but one pupil a little girl under ten years of age and where the salary is thirty pounds per annum. J.E. is requested to send references name address and all particulars to the direction— Mrs Fairfax Thornfield near Millcote ——shire. I examined the document long the writing was old-fashioned and rather uncertain like that of an elderly lady. This circumstance was satisfactory a private fear had haunted me that in thus acting for myself and by my own guidance I ran the risk of getting into some scrape and above all things I wished the result of my endeavours to be respectable proper en règle. I now felt that an elderly lady was no bad ingredient in the business I had on hand. Mrs Fairfax! I saw her in a black gown and widow’s cap frigid perhaps but not uncivil a model of elderly English respectability. Thornfield! that doubtless was the name of her house a neat orderly spot I was sure though I failed in my efforts to conceive a correct plan of the premises. Millcote ——shire I brushed up my recollections of the map of England yes I saw it both the shire and the town. ——shire was seventy miles nearer London than the remote county where I now resided that was a recommendation to me. I longed to go where there was life and movement Millcote was a large manufacturing town on the banks of the A—— a busy place enough doubtless so much the better it would be a complete change at least. Not that my fancy was much captivated by the idea of long chimneys and clouds of smoke—but I argued Thornfield will probably be a good way from the town. Here the socket of the candle dropped and the wick went out. Next day new steps were to be taken my plans could no longer be confined to my own breast I must impart them in order to achieve their success. Having sought and obtained an audience of the superintendent during the noontide recreation I told her I had a prospect of getting a new situation where the salary would be double what I now received for at Lowood I only got £15 per annum and requested she would break the matter for me to Mr Brocklehurst or some of the committee and ascertain whether they would permit me to mention them as references. She obligingly consented to act as mediatrix in the matter. The next day she laid the affair before Mr Brocklehurst who said that Mrs Reed must be written to as she was my natural guardian. A note was accordingly addressed to that lady who returned for answer that I might do as I pleased she had long relinquished all interference in my affairs. This note went the round of the committee and at last after what appeared to me most tedious delay formal leave was given me to better my condition if I could and an assurance added that as I had always conducted myself well both as teacher and pupil at Lowood a testimonial of character and capacity signed by the inspectors of that institution should forthwith be furnished me. This testimonial I accordingly received in about a month forwarded a copy of it to Mrs Fairfax and got that lady’s reply stating that she was satisfied and fixing that day fortnight as the period for my assuming the post of governess in her house. I now busied myself in preparations the fortnight passed rapidly. I had not a very large wardrobe though it was adequate to my wants and the last day sufficed to pack my trunk—the same I had brought with me eight years ago from Gateshead. The box was corded the card nailed on. In half-an-hour the carrier was to call for it to take it to Lowton whither I myself was to repair at an early hour the next morning to meet the coach. I had brushed my black stuff travelling-dress prepared my bonnet gloves and muff sought in all my drawers to see that no article was left behind and now having nothing more to do I sat down and tried to rest. I could not though I had been on foot all day I could not now repose an instant I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing to-night a new one opening to-morrow impossible to slumber in the interval I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished. Miss said a servant who met me in the lobby where I was wandering like a troubled spirit a person below wishes to see you. The carrier no doubt I thought and ran downstairs without inquiry. I was passing the back-parlour or teachers’ sitting-room the door of which was half open to go to the kitchen when some one ran out— It’s her I am sure!—I could have told her anywhere! cried the individual who stopped my progress and took my hand. I looked I saw a woman attired like a well-dressed servant matronly yet still young very good-looking with black hair and eyes and lively complexion. Well who is it? she asked in a voice and with a smile I half recognised you’ve not quite forgotten me I think Miss Jane? In another second I was embracing and kissing her rapturously Bessie! Bessie! Bessie! that was all I said whereat she half laughed half cried and we both went into the parlour. By the fire stood a little fellow of three years old in plaid frock and trousers. That is my little boy said Bessie directly. Then you are married Bessie? Yes nearly five years since to Robert Leaven the coachman and I’ve a little girl besides Bobby there that I’ve christened Jane. And you don’t live at Gateshead? I live at the lodge the old porter has left. Well and how do they all get on? Tell me everything about them Bessie but sit down first and Bobby come and sit on my knee will you? but Bobby preferred sidling over to his mother. You’re not grown so very tall Miss Jane nor so very stout continued Mrs Leaven. I dare say they’ve not kept you too well at school Miss Reed is the head and shoulders taller than you are and Miss Georgiana would make two of you in breadth. Georgiana is handsome I suppose Bessie? Very. She went up to London last winter with her mama and there everybody admired her and a young lord fell in love with her but his relations were against the match and—what do you think?—he and Miss Georgiana made it up to run away but they were found out and stopped. It was Miss Reed that found them out I believe she was envious and now she and her sister lead a cat and dog life together they are always quarrelling— Well and what of John Reed? Oh he is not doing so well as his mama could wish. He went to college and he got—plucked I think they call it and then his uncles wanted him to be a barrister and study the law but he is such a dissipated young man they will never make much of him I think. What does he look like? He is very tall some people call him a fine-looking young man but he has such thick lips. And Mrs Reed? Missis looks stout and well enough in the face but I think she’s not quite easy in her mind Mr John’s conduct does not please her—he spends a deal of money. Did she send you here Bessie? No indeed but I have long wanted to see you and when I heard that there had been a letter from you and that you were going to another part of the country I thought I’d just set off and get a look at you before you were quite out of my reach. I am afraid you are disappointed in me Bessie. I said this laughing I perceived that Bessie’s glance though it expressed regard did in no shape denote admiration. No Miss Jane not exactly you are genteel enough you look like a lady and it is as much as ever I expected of you you were no beauty as a child. I smiled at Bessie’s frank answer I felt that it was correct but I confess I was not quite indifferent to its import at eighteen most people wish to please and the conviction that they have not an exterior likely to second that desire brings anything but gratification. I dare say you are clever though continued Bessie by way of solace. What can you do? Can you play on the piano? A little. There was one in the room Bessie went and opened it and then asked me to sit down and give her a tune I played a waltz or two and she was charmed. The Miss Reeds could not play as well! said she exultingly. I always said you would surpass them in learning and can you draw? That is one of my paintings over the chimney-piece. It was a landscape in water colours of which I had made a present to the superintendent in acknowledgment of her obliging mediation with the committee on my behalf and which she had framed and glazed. Well that is beautiful Miss Jane! It is as fine a picture as any Miss Reed’s drawing-master could paint let alone the young ladies themselves who could not come near it and have you learnt French? Yes Bessie I can both read it and speak it. And you can work on muslin and canvas? I can. Oh you are quite a lady Miss Jane! I knew you would be you will get on whether your relations notice you or not. There was something I wanted to ask you. Have you ever heard anything from your father’s kinsfolk the Eyres? Never in my life. Well you know Missis always said they were poor and quite despicable and they may be poor but I believe they are as much gentry as the Reeds are for one day nearly seven years ago a Mr Eyre came to Gateshead and wanted to see you Missis said you were at school fifty miles off he seemed so much disappointed for he could not stay he was going on a voyage to a foreign country and the ship was to sail from London in a day or two. He looked quite a gentleman and I believe he was your father’s brother. What foreign country was he going to Bessie? An island thousands of miles off where they make wine—the butler did tell me— Madeira? I suggested. Yes that is it—that is the very word. So he went? Yes he did not stay many minutes in the house Missis was very high with him she called him afterwards a ‘sneaking tradesman.’ My Robert believes he was a wine-merchant. Very likely I returned or perhaps clerk or agent to a wine-merchant. Bessie and I conversed about old times an hour longer and then she was obliged to leave me I saw her again for a few minutes the next morning at Lowton while I was waiting for the coach. We parted finally at the door of the Brocklehurst Arms there each went her separate way she set off for the brow of Lowood Fell to meet the conveyance which was to take her back to Gateshead I mounted the vehicle which was to bear me to new duties and a new life in the unknown environs of Millcote. ', 'A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play and when I draw up the curtain this time reader you must fancy you see a room in the George Inn at Millcote with such large figured papering on the walls as inn rooms have such a carpet such furniture such ornaments on the mantelpiece such prints including a portrait of George the Third and another of the Prince of Wales and a representation of the death of Wolfe. All this is visible to you by the light of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling and by that of an excellent fire near which I sit in my cloak and bonnet my muff and umbrella lie on the table and I am warming away the numbness and chill contracted by sixteen hours’ exposure to the rawness of an October day I left Lowton at four o’clock A.M. and the Millcote town clock is now just striking eight. Reader though I look comfortably accommodated I am not very tranquil in my mind. I thought when the coach stopped here there would be some one to meet me I looked anxiously round as I descended the wooden steps the boots placed for my convenience expecting to hear my name pronounced and to see some description of carriage waiting to convey me to Thornfield. Nothing of the sort was visible and when I asked a waiter if any one had been to inquire after a Miss Eyre I was answered in the negative so I had no resource but to request to be shown into a private room and here I am waiting while all sorts of doubts and fears are troubling my thoughts. It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world cut adrift from every connection uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation the glow of pride warms it but then the throb of fear disturbs it and fear with me became predominant when half-an-hour elapsed and still I was alone. I bethought myself to ring the bell. Is there a place in this neighbourhood called Thornfield? I asked of the waiter who answered the summons. Thornfield? I don’t know ma’am I’ll inquire at the bar. He vanished but reappeared instantly— Is your name Eyre Miss? Yes. Person here waiting for you. I jumped up took my muff and umbrella and hastened into the inn-passage a man was standing by the open door and in the lamp-lit street I dimly saw a one-horse conveyance. This will be your luggage I suppose? said the man rather abruptly when he saw me pointing to my trunk in the passage. Yes. He hoisted it on to the vehicle which was a sort of car and then I got in before he shut me up I asked him how far it was to Thornfield. A matter of six miles. How long shall we be before we get there? Happen an hour and a half. He fastened the car door climbed to his own seat outside and we set off. Our progress was leisurely and gave me ample time to reflect I was content to be at length so near the end of my journey and as I leaned back in the comfortable though not elegant conveyance I meditated much at my ease. I suppose thought I judging from the plainness of the servant and carriage Mrs Fairfax is not a very dashing person so much the better I never lived amongst fine people but once and I was very miserable with them. I wonder if she lives alone except this little girl if so and if she is in any degree amiable I shall surely be able to get on with her I will do my best it is a pity that doing one’s best does not always answer. At Lowood indeed I took that resolution kept it and succeeded in pleasing but with Mrs Reed I remember my best was always spurned with scorn. I pray God Mrs Fairfax may not turn out a second Mrs Reed but if she does I am not bound to stay with her! let the worst come to the worst I can advertise again. How far are we on our road now I wonder? I let down the window and looked out Millcote was behind us judging by the number of its lights it seemed a place of considerable magnitude much larger than Lowton. We were now as far as I could see on a sort of common but there were houses scattered all over the district I felt we were in a different region to Lowood more populous less picturesque more stirring less romantic. The roads were heavy the night misty my conductor let his horse walk all the way and the hour and a half extended I verily believe to two hours at last he turned in his seat and said— You’re noan so far fro’ Thornfield now. Again I looked out we were passing a church I saw its low broad tower against the sky and its bell was tolling a quarter I saw a narrow galaxy of lights too on a hillside marking a village or hamlet. About ten minutes after the driver got down and opened a pair of gates we passed through and they clashed to behind us. We now slowly ascended a drive and came upon the long front of a house candlelight gleamed from one curtained bow-window all the rest were dark. The car stopped at the front door it was opened by a maid-servant I alighted and went in. Will you walk this way ma’am? said the girl and I followed her across a square hall with high doors all round she ushered me into a room whose double illumination of fire and candle at first dazzled me contrasting as it did with the darkness to which my eyes had been for two hours inured when I could see however a cosy and agreeable picture presented itself to my view. A snug small room a round table by a cheerful fire an arm-chair high-backed and old-fashioned wherein sat the neatest imaginable little elderly lady in widow’s cap black silk gown and snowy muslin apron exactly like what I had fancied Mrs Fairfax only less stately and milder looking. She was occupied in knitting a large cat sat demurely at her feet nothing in short was wanting to complete the beau-ideal of domestic comfort. A more reassuring introduction for a new governess could scarcely be conceived there was no grandeur to overwhelm no stateliness to embarrass and then as I entered the old lady got up and promptly and kindly came forward to meet me. How do you do my dear? I am afraid you have had a tedious ride John drives so slowly you must be cold come to the fire. Mrs Fairfax I suppose? said I. Yes you are right do sit down. She conducted me to her own chair and then began to remove my shawl and untie my bonnet-strings I begged she would not give herself so much trouble. Oh it is no trouble I dare say your own hands are almost numbed with cold. Leah make a little hot negus and cut a sandwich or two here are the keys of the storeroom. And she produced from her pocket a most housewifely bunch of keys and delivered them to the servant. Now then draw nearer to the fire she continued. You’ve brought your luggage with you haven’t you my dear? Yes ma’am. I’ll see it carried into your room she said and bustled out. She treats me like a visitor thought I. I little expected such a reception I anticipated only coldness and stiffness this is not like what I have heard of the treatment of governesses but I must not exult too soon. She returned with her own hands cleared her knitting apparatus and a book or two from the table to make room for the tray which Leah now brought and then herself handed me the refreshments. I felt rather confused at being the object of more attention than I had ever before received and that too shown by my employer and superior but as she did not herself seem to consider she was doing anything out of her place I thought it better to take her civilities quietly. Shall I have the pleasure of seeing Miss Fairfax to-night? I asked when I had partaken of what she offered me. What did you say my dear? I am a little deaf returned the good lady approaching her ear to my mouth. I repeated the question more distinctly. Miss Fairfax? Oh you mean Miss Varens! Varens is the name of your future pupil. Indeed! Then she is not your daughter? No—I have no family. I should have followed up my first inquiry by asking in what way Miss Varens was connected with her but I recollected it was not polite to ask too many questions besides I was sure to hear in time. I am so glad she continued as she sat down opposite to me and took the cat on her knee I am so glad you are come it will be quite pleasant living here now with a companion. To be sure it is pleasant at any time for Thornfield is a fine old hall rather neglected of late years perhaps but still it is a respectable place yet you know in winter-time one feels dreary quite alone in the best quarters. I say alone—Leah is a nice girl to be sure and John and his wife are very decent people but then you see they are only servants and one can’t converse with them on terms of equality one must keep them at due distance for fear of losing one’s authority. I’m sure last winter it was a very severe one if you recollect and when it did not snow it rained and blew not a creature but the butcher and postman came to the house from November till February and I really got quite melancholy with sitting night after night alone I had Leah in to read to me sometimes but I don’t think the poor girl liked the task much she felt it confining. In spring and summer one got on better sunshine and long days make such a difference and then just at the commencement of this autumn little Adela Varens came and her nurse a child makes a house alive all at once and now you are here I shall be quite gay. My heart really warmed to the worthy lady as I heard her talk and I drew my chair a little nearer to her and expressed my sincere wish that she might find my company as agreeable as she anticipated. But I’ll not keep you sitting up late to-night said she it is on the stroke of twelve now and you have been travelling all day you must feel tired. If you have got your feet well warmed I’ll show you your bedroom. I’ve had the room next to mine prepared for you it is only a small apartment but I thought you would like it better than one of the large front chambers to be sure they have finer furniture but they are so dreary and solitary I never sleep in them myself. I thanked her for her considerate choice and as I really felt fatigued with my long journey expressed my readiness to retire. She took her candle and I followed her from the room. First she went to see if the hall-door was fastened having taken the key from the lock she led the way upstairs. The steps and banisters were of oak the staircase window was high and latticed both it and the long gallery into which the bedroom doors opened looked as if they belonged to a church rather than a house. A very chill and vault-like air pervaded the stairs and gallery suggesting cheerless ideas of space and solitude and I was glad when finally ushered into my chamber to find it of small dimensions and furnished in ordinary modern style. When Mrs Fairfax had bidden me a kind good-night and I had fastened my door gazed leisurely round and in some measure effaced the eerie impression made by that wide hall that dark and spacious staircase and that long cold gallery by the livelier aspect of my little room I remembered that after a day of bodily fatigue and mental anxiety I was now at last in safe haven. The impulse of gratitude swelled my heart and I knelt down at the bedside and offered up thanks where thanks were due not forgetting ere I rose to implore aid on my further path and the power of meriting the kindness which seemed so frankly offered me before it was earned. My couch had no thorns in it that night my solitary room no fears. At once weary and content I slept soon and soundly when I awoke it was broad day. The chamber looked such a bright little place to me as the sun shone in between the gay blue chintz window curtains showing papered walls and a carpeted floor so unlike the bare planks and stained plaster of Lowood that my spirits rose at the view. Externals have a great effect on the young I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me one that was to have its flowers and pleasures as well as its thorns and toils. My faculties roused by the change of scene the new field offered to hope seemed all astir. I cannot precisely define what they expected but it was something pleasant not perhaps that day or that month but at an indefinite future period. I rose I dressed myself with care obliged to be plain—for I had no article of attire that was not made with extreme simplicity—I was still by nature solicitous to be neat. It was not my habit to be disregardful of appearance or careless of the impression I made on the contrary I ever wished to look as well as I could and to please as much as my want of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks a straight nose and small cherry mouth I desired to be tall stately and finely developed in figure I felt it a misfortune that I was so little so pale and had features so irregular and so marked. And why had I these aspirations and these regrets? It would be difficult to say I could not then distinctly say it to myself yet I had a reason and a logical natural reason too. However when I had brushed my hair very smooth and put on my black frock—which Quakerlike as it was at least had the merit of fitting to a nicety—and adjusted my clean white tucker I thought I should do respectably enough to appear before Mrs Fairfax and that my new pupil would not at least recoil from me with antipathy. Having opened my chamber window and seen that I left all things straight and neat on the toilet table I ventured forth. Traversing the long and matted gallery I descended the slippery steps of oak then I gained the hall I halted there a minute I looked at some pictures on the walls one I remember represented a grim man in a cuirass and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling at a great clock whose case was of oak curiously carved and ebon black with time and rubbing. Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me but then I was so little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door which was half of glass stood open I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine autumn morning the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green fields advancing on to the lawn I looked up and surveyed the front of the mansion. It was three storeys high of proportions not vast though considerable a gentleman’s manor-house not a nobleman’s seat battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front stood out well from the background of a rookery whose cawing tenants were now on the wing they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great meadow from which these were separated by a sunk fence and where an array of mighty old thorn trees strong knotty and broad as oaks at once explained the etymology of the mansion’s designation. Farther off were hills not so lofty as those round Lowood nor so craggy nor so like barriers of separation from the living world but yet quiet and lonely hills enough and seeming to embrace Thornfield with a seclusion I had not expected to find existent so near the stirring locality of Millcote. A little hamlet whose roofs were blent with trees straggled up the side of one of these hills the church of the district stood nearer Thornfield its old tower-top looked over a knoll between the house and gates. I was yet enjoying the calm prospect and pleasant fresh air yet listening with delight to the cawing of the rooks yet surveying the wide hoary front of the hall and thinking what a great place it was for one lonely little dame like Mrs Fairfax to inhabit when that lady appeared at the door. What! out already? said she. I see you are an early riser. I went up to her and was received with an affable kiss and shake of the hand. How do you like Thornfield? she asked. I told her I liked it very much. Yes she said it is a pretty place but I fear it will be getting out of order unless Mr Rochester should take it into his head to come and reside here permanently or at least visit it rather oftener great houses and fine grounds require the presence of the proprietor. Mr Rochester! I exclaimed. Who is he? The owner of Thornfield she responded quietly. Did you not know he was called Rochester? Of course I did not—I had never heard of him before but the old lady seemed to regard his existence as a universally understood fact with which everybody must be acquainted by instinct. I thought I continued Thornfield belonged to you. To me? Bless you child what an idea! To me! I am only the housekeeper—the manager. To be sure I am distantly related to the Rochesters by the mother’s side or at least my husband was he was a clergyman incumbent of Hay—that little village yonder on the hill—and that church near the gates was his. The present Mr Rochester’s mother was a Fairfax and second cousin to my husband but I never presume on the connection—in fact it is nothing to me I consider myself quite in the light of an ordinary housekeeper my employer is always civil and I expect nothing more. And the little girl—my pupil! She is Mr Rochester’s ward he commissioned me to find a governess for her. He intended to have her brought up in ——shire I believe. Here she comes with her ‘bonne’ as she calls her nurse. The enigma then was explained this affable and kind little widow was no great dame but a dependent like myself. I did not like her the worse for that on the contrary I felt better pleased than ever. The equality between her and me was real not the mere result of condescension on her part so much the better—my position was all the freer. As I was meditating on this discovery a little girl followed by her attendant came running up the lawn. I looked at my pupil who did not at first appear to notice me she was quite a child perhaps seven or eight years old slightly built with a pale small-featured face and a redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist. Good morning Miss Adela said Mrs Fairfax. Come and speak to the lady who is to teach you and to make you a clever woman some day. She approached. C’est là ma gouvernante! said she pointing to me and addressing her nurse who answered— Mais oui certainement. Are they foreigners? I inquired amazed at hearing the French language. The nurse is a foreigner and Adela was born on the Continent and I believe never left it till within six months ago. When she first came here she could speak no English now she can make shift to talk it a little I don’t understand her she mixes it so with French but you will make out her meaning very well I dare say. Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French lady and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame Pierrot as often as I could and had besides during the last seven years learnt a portion of French by heart daily—applying myself to take pains with my accent and imitating as closely as possible the pronunciation of my teacher I had acquired a certain degree of readiness and correctness in the language and was not likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela. She came and shook hands with me when she heard that I was her governess and as I led her in to breakfast I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue she replied briefly at first but after we were seated at the table and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes she suddenly commenced chattering fluently. Ah! cried she in French you speak my language as well as Mr Rochester does I can talk to you as I can to him and so can Sophie. She will be glad nobody here understands her Madame Fairfax is all English. Sophie is my nurse she came with me over the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked—how it did smoke!—and I was sick and so was Sophie and so was Mr Rochester. Mr Rochester lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon and Sophie and I had little beds in another place. I nearly fell out of mine it was like a shelf. And Mademoiselle—what is your name? Eyre—Jane Eyre. Aire? Bah! I cannot say it. Well our ship stopped in the morning before it was quite daylight at a great city—a huge city with very dark houses and all smoky not at all like the pretty clean town I came from and Mr Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the land and Sophie came after and we all got into a coach which took us to a beautiful large house larger than this and finer called an hotel. We stayed there nearly a week I and Sophie used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees called the Park and there were many children there besides me and a pond with beautiful birds in it that I fed with crumbs. Can you understand her when she runs on so fast? asked Mrs Fairfax. I understood her very well for I had been accustomed to the fluent tongue of Madame Pierrot. I wish continued the good lady you would ask her a question or two about her parents I wonder if she remembers them? Adèle I inquired with whom did you live when you were in that pretty clean town you spoke of? I lived long ago with mama but she is gone to the Holy Virgin. Mama used to teach me to dance and sing and to say verses. A great many gentlemen and ladies came to see mama and I used to dance before them or to sit on their knees and sing to them I liked it. Shall I let you hear me sing now? She had finished her breakfast so I permitted her to give a specimen of her accomplishments. Descending from her chair she came and placed herself on my knee then folding her little hands demurely before her shaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the ceiling she commenced singing a song from some opera. It was the strain of a forsaken lady who after bewailing the perfidy of her lover calls pride to her aid desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest jewels and richest robes and resolves to meet the false one that night at a ball and prove to him by the gaiety of her demeanour how little his desertion has affected her. The subject seemed strangely chosen for an infant singer but I suppose the point of the exhibition lay in hearing the notes of love and jealousy warbled with the lisp of childhood and in very bad taste that point was at least I thought so. Adèle sang the canzonette tunefully enough and with the naïveté of her age. This achieved she jumped from my knee and said Now Mademoiselle I will repeat you some poetry. Assuming an attitude she began La Ligue des Rats fable de La Fontaine. She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to punctuation and emphasis a flexibility of voice and an appropriateness of gesture very unusual indeed at her age and which proved she had been carefully trained. Was it your mama who taught you that piece? I asked. Yes and she just used to say it in this way ‘Qu’avez vous donc? lui dit un de ces rats parlez!’ She made me lift my hand—so—to remind me to raise my voice at the question. Now shall I dance for you? No that will do but after your mama went to the Holy Virgin as you say with whom did you live then? With Madame Frédéric and her husband she took care of me but she is nothing related to me. I think she is poor for she had not so fine a house as mama. I was not long there. Mr Rochester asked me if I would like to go and live with him in England and I said yes for I knew Mr Rochester before I knew Madame Frédéric and he was always kind to me and gave me pretty dresses and toys but you see he has not kept his word for he has brought me to England and now he is gone back again himself and I never see him. After breakfast Adèle and I withdrew to the library which room it appears Mr Rochester had directed should be used as the schoolroom. Most of the books were locked up behind glass doors but there was one bookcase left open containing everything that could be needed in the way of elementary works and several volumes of light literature poetry biography travels a few romances &c. I suppose he had considered that these were all the governess would require for her private perusal and indeed they contented me amply for the present compared with the scanty pickings I had now and then been able to glean at Lowood they seemed to offer an abundant harvest of entertainment and information. In this room too there was a cabinet piano quite new and of superior tone also an easel for painting and a pair of globes. I found my pupil sufficiently docile though disinclined to apply she had not been used to regular occupation of any kind. I felt it would be injudicious to confine her too much at first so when I had talked to her a great deal and got her to learn a little and when the morning had advanced to noon I allowed her to return to her nurse. I then proposed to occupy myself till dinner-time in drawing some little sketches for her use. As I was going upstairs to fetch my portfolio and pencils Mrs Fairfax called to me Your morning school-hours are over now I suppose said she. She was in a room the folding-doors of which stood open I went in when she addressed me. It was a large stately apartment with purple chairs and curtains a Turkey carpet walnut-panelled walls one vast window rich in stained glass and a lofty ceiling nobly moulded. Mrs Fairfax was dusting some vases of fine purple spar which stood on a sideboard. What a beautiful room! I exclaimed as I looked round for I had never before seen any half so imposing. Yes this is the dining-room. I have just opened the window to let in a little air and sunshine for everything gets so damp in apartments that are seldom inhabited the drawing-room yonder feels like a vault. She pointed to a wide arch corresponding to the window and hung like it with a Tyrian-dyed curtain now looped up. Mounting to it by two broad steps and looking through I thought I caught a glimpse of a fairy place so bright to my novice-eyes appeared the view beyond. Yet it was merely a very pretty drawing-room and within it a boudoir both spread with white carpets on which seemed laid brilliant garlands of flowers both ceiled with snowy mouldings of white grapes and vine-leaves beneath which glowed in rich contrast crimson couches and ottomans while the ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of sparkling Bohemian glass ruby red and between the windows large mirrors repeated the general blending of snow and fire. In what order you keep these rooms Mrs Fairfax! said I. No dust no canvas coverings except that the air feels chilly one would think they were inhabited daily. Why Miss Eyre though Mr Rochester’s visits here are rare they are always sudden and unexpected and as I observed that it put him out to find everything swathed up and to have a bustle of arrangement on his arrival I thought it best to keep the rooms in readiness. Is Mr Rochester an exacting fastidious sort of man? Not particularly so but he has a gentleman’s tastes and habits and he expects to have things managed in conformity to them. Do you like him? Is he generally liked? Oh yes the family have always been respected here. Almost all the land in this neighbourhood as far as you can see has belonged to the Rochesters time out of mind. Well but leaving his land out of the question do you like him? Is he liked for himself? I have no cause to do otherwise than like him and I believe he is considered a just and liberal landlord by his tenants but he has never lived much amongst them. But has he no peculiarities? What in short is his character? Oh! his character is unimpeachable I suppose. He is rather peculiar perhaps he has travelled a great deal and seen a great deal of the world I should think. I dare say he is clever but I never had much conversation with him. In what way is he peculiar? I don’t know—it is not easy to describe—nothing striking but you feel it when he speaks to you you cannot be always sure whether he is in jest or earnest whether he is pleased or the contrary you don’t thoroughly understand him in short—at least I don’t but it is of no consequence he is a very good master. This was all the account I got from Mrs Fairfax of her employer and mine. There are people who seem to have no notion of sketching a character or observing and describing salient points either in persons or things the good lady evidently belonged to this class my queries puzzled but did not draw her out. Mr Rochester was Mr Rochester in her eyes a gentleman a landed proprietor—nothing more she inquired and searched no further and evidently wondered at my wish to gain a more definite notion of his identity. When we left the dining-room she proposed to show me over the rest of the house and I followed her upstairs and downstairs admiring as I went for all was well arranged and handsome. The large front chambers I thought especially grand and some of the third-storey rooms though dark and low were interesting from their air of antiquity. The furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to time been removed here as fashions changed and the imperfect light entering by their narrow casement showed bedsteads of a hundred years old chests in oak or walnut looking with their strange carvings of palm branches and cherubs’ heads like types of the Hebrew ark rows of venerable chairs high-backed and narrow stools still more antiquated on whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced embroideries wrought by fingers that for two generations had been coffin-dust. All these relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past a shrine of memory. I liked the hush the gloom the quaintness of these retreats in the day but I by no means coveted a night’s repose on one of those wide and heavy beds shut in some of them with doors of oak shaded others with wrought old English hangings crusted with thick work portraying effigies of strange flowers and stranger birds and strangest human beings—all which would have looked strange indeed by the pallid gleam of moonlight. Do the servants sleep in these rooms? I asked. No they occupy a range of smaller apartments to the back no one ever sleeps here one would almost say that if there were a ghost at Thornfield Hall this would be its haunt. So I think you have no ghost then? None that I ever heard of returned Mrs Fairfax smiling. Nor any traditions of one? no legends or ghost stories? I believe not. And yet it is said the Rochesters have been rather a violent than a quiet race in their time perhaps though that is the reason they rest tranquilly in their graves now. Yes—‘after life’s fitful fever they sleep well’ I muttered. Where are you going now Mrs Fairfax? for she was moving away. On to the leads will you come and see the view from thence? I followed still up a very narrow staircase to the attics and thence by a ladder and through a trap-door to the roof of the hall. I was now on a level with the crow colony and could see into their nests. Leaning over the battlements and looking far down I surveyed the grounds laid out like a map the bright and velvet lawn closely girdling the grey base of the mansion the field wide as a park dotted with its ancient timber the wood dun and sere divided by a path visibly overgrown greener with moss than the trees were with foliage the church at the gates the road the tranquil hills all reposing in the autumn day’s sun the horizon bounded by a propitious sky azure marbled with pearly white. No feature in the scene was extraordinary but all was pleasing. When I turned from it and repassed the trap-door I could scarcely see my way down the ladder the attic seemed black as a vault compared with that arch of blue air to which I had been looking up and to that sunlit scene of grove pasture and green hill of which the hall was the centre and over which I had been gazing with delight. Mrs Fairfax stayed behind a moment to fasten the trap-door I by dint of groping found the outlet from the attic and proceeded to descend the narrow garret staircase. I lingered in the long passage to which this led separating the front and back rooms of the third storey narrow low and dim with only one little window at the far end and looking with its two rows of small black doors all shut like a corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle. While I paced softly on the last sound I expected to hear in so still a region a laugh struck my ear. It was a curious laugh distinct formal mirthless. I stopped the sound ceased only for an instant it began again louder for at first though distinct it was very low. It passed off in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every lonely chamber though it originated but in one and I could have pointed out the door whence the accents issued. Mrs Fairfax! I called out for I now heard her descending the great stairs. Did you hear that loud laugh? Who is it? Some of the servants very likely she answered perhaps Grace Poole. Did you hear it? I again inquired. Yes plainly I often hear her she sews in one of these rooms. Sometimes Leah is with her they are frequently noisy together. The laugh was repeated in its low syllabic tone and terminated in an odd murmur. Grace! exclaimed Mrs Fairfax. I really did not expect any Grace to answer for the laugh was as tragic as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard and but that it was high noon and that no circumstance of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachinnation but that neither scene nor season favoured fear I should have been superstitiously afraid. However the event showed me I was a fool for entertaining a sense even of surprise. The door nearest me opened and a servant came out—a woman of between thirty and forty a set square-made figure red-haired and with a hard plain face any apparition less romantic or less ghostly could scarcely be conceived. Too much noise Grace said Mrs Fairfax. Remember directions! Grace curtseyed silently and went in. She is a person we have to sew and assist Leah in her housemaid’s work continued the widow not altogether unobjectionable in some points but she does well enough. By-the-bye how have you got on with your new pupil this morning? The conversation thus turned on Adèle continued till we reached the light and cheerful region below. Adèle came running to meet us in the hall exclaiming— Mesdames vous êtes servies! adding J’ai bien faim moi! We found dinner ready and waiting for us in Mrs Fairfax’s room. ', 'The promise of a smooth career which my first calm introduction to Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge was not belied on a longer acquaintance with the place and its inmates. Mrs Fairfax turned out to be what she appeared a placid-tempered kind-natured woman of competent education and average intelligence. My pupil was a lively child who had been spoilt and indulged and therefore was sometimes wayward but as she was committed entirely to my care and no injudicious interference from any quarter ever thwarted my plans for her improvement she soon forgot her little freaks and became obedient and teachable. She had no great talents no marked traits of character no peculiar development of feeling or taste which raised her one inch above the ordinary level of childhood but neither had she any deficiency or vice which sunk her below it. She made reasonable progress entertained for me a vivacious though perhaps not very profound affection and by her simplicity gay prattle and efforts to please inspired me in return with a degree of attachment sufficient to make us both content in each other’s society. This par parenthèse will be thought cool language by persons who entertain solemn doctrines about the angelic nature of children and the duty of those charged with their education to conceive for them an idolatrous devotion but I am not writing to flatter parental egotism to echo cant or prop up humbug I am merely telling the truth. I felt a conscientious solicitude for Adèle’s welfare and progress and a quiet liking for her little self just as I cherished towards Mrs Fairfax a thankfulness for her kindness and a pleasure in her society proportionate to the tranquil regard she had for me and the moderation of her mind and character. Anybody may blame me who likes when I add further that now and then when I took a walk by myself in the grounds when I went down to the gates and looked through them along the road or when while Adèle played with her nurse and Mrs Fairfax made jellies in the storeroom I climbed the three staircases raised the trap-door of the attic and having reached the leads looked out afar over sequestered field and hill and along dim sky-line—that then I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit which might reach the busy world towns regions full of life I had heard of but never seen—that then I desired more of practical experience than I possessed more of intercourse with my kind of acquaintance with variety of character than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs Fairfax and what was good in Adèle but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness and what I believed in I wished to behold. Who blames me? Many no doubt and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it the restlessness was in my nature it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third storey backwards and forwards safe in the silence and solitude of the spot and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it—and certainly they were many and glowing to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement which while it swelled it in trouble expanded it with life and best of all to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended—a tale my imagination created and narrated continuously quickened with all of incident life fire feeling that I desired and had not in my actual existence. It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity they must have action and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally but women feel just as men feel they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do they suffer from too rigid a restraint too absolute a stagnation precisely as men would suffer and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them or laugh at them if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. When thus alone I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh the same peal the same low slow ha! ha! which when first heard had thrilled me I heard too her eccentric murmurs stranger than her laugh. There were days when she was quite silent but there were others when I could not account for the sounds she made. Sometimes I saw her she would come out of her room with a basin or a plate or a tray in her hand go down to the kitchen and shortly return generally oh romantic reader forgive me for telling the plain truth! bearing a pot of porter. Her appearance always acted as a damper to the curiosity raised by her oral oddities hard-featured and staid she had no point to which interest could attach. I made some attempts to draw her into conversation but she seemed a person of few words a monosyllabic reply usually cut short every effort of that sort. The other members of the household viz. John and his wife Leah the housemaid and Sophie the French nurse were decent people but in no respect remarkable with Sophie I used to talk French and sometimes I asked her questions about her native country but she was not of a descriptive or narrative turn and generally gave such vapid and confused answers as were calculated rather to check than encourage inquiry. October November December passed away. One afternoon in January Mrs Fairfax had begged a holiday for Adèle because she had a cold and as Adèle seconded the request with an ardour that reminded me how precious occasional holidays had been to me in my own childhood I accorded it deeming that I did well in showing pliability on the point. It was a fine calm day though very cold I was tired of sitting still in the library through a whole long morning Mrs Fairfax had just written a letter which was waiting to be posted so I put on my bonnet and cloak and volunteered to carry it to Hay the distance two miles would be a pleasant winter afternoon walk. Having seen Adèle comfortably seated in her little chair by Mrs Fairfax’s parlour fireside and given her her best wax doll which I usually kept enveloped in silver paper in a drawer to play with and a story-book for change of amusement and having replied to her Revenez bientôt ma bonne amie ma chère Mdlle. Jeannette with a kiss I set out. The ground was hard the air was still my road was lonely I walked fast till I got warm and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was three o’clock the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry the charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield in a lane noted for wild roses in summer for nuts and blackberries in autumn and even now possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws but whose best winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred it made no sound here for there was not a holly not an evergreen to rustle and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as the white worn stones which causewayed the middle of the path. Far and wide on each side there were only fields where no cattle now browsed and the little brown birds which stirred occasionally in the hedge looked like single russet leaves that had forgotten to drop. This lane inclined up-hill all the way to Hay having reached the middle I sat down on a stile which led thence into a field. Gathering my mantle about me and sheltering my hands in my muff I did not feel the cold though it froze keenly as was attested by a sheet of ice covering the causeway where a little brooklet now congealed had overflowed after a rapid thaw some days since. From my seat I could look down on Thornfield the grey and battlemented hall was the principal object in the vale below me its woods and dark rookery rose against the west. I lingered till the sun went down amongst the trees and sank crimson and clear behind them. I then turned eastward. On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon pale yet as a cloud but brightening momentarily she looked over Hay which half lost in trees sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys it was yet a mile distant but in the absolute hush I could hear plainly its thin murmurs of life. My ear too felt the flow of currents in what dales and depths I could not tell but there were many hills beyond Hay and doubtless many becks threading their passes. That evening calm betrayed alike the tinkle of the nearest streams the sough of the most remote. A rude noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings at once so far away and so clear a positive tramp tramp a metallic clatter which effaced the soft wave-wanderings as in a picture the solid mass of a crag or the rough boles of a great oak drawn in dark and strong on the foreground efface the aërial distance of azure hill sunny horizon and blended clouds where tint melts into tint. The din was on the causeway a horse was coming the windings of the lane yet hid it but it approached. I was just leaving the stile yet as the path was narrow I sat still to let it go by. In those days I was young and all sorts of fancies bright and dark tenanted my mind the memories of nursery stories were there amongst other rubbish and when they recurred maturing youth added to them a vigour and vividness beyond what childhood could give. As this horse approached and as I watched for it to appear through the dusk I remembered certain of Bessie’s tales wherein figured a North-of-England spirit called a Gytrash which in the form of horse mule or large dog haunted solitary ways and sometimes came upon belated travellers as this horse was now coming upon me. It was very near but not yet in sight when in addition to the tramp tramp I heard a rush under the hedge and close down by the hazel stems glided a great dog whose black and white colour made him a distinct object against the trees. It was exactly one form of Bessie’s Gytrash—a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head it passed me however quietly enough not staying to look up with strange pretercanine eyes in my face as I half expected it would. The horse followed—a tall steed and on its back a rider. The man the human being broke the spell at once. Nothing ever rode the Gytrash it was always alone and goblins to my notions though they might tenant the dumb carcasses of beasts could scarce covet shelter in the commonplace human form. No Gytrash was this—only a traveller taking the short cut to Millcote. He passed and I went on a few steps and I turned a sliding sound and an exclamation of What the deuce is to do now? and a clattering tumble arrested my attention. Man and horse were down they had slipped on the sheet of ice which glazed the causeway. The dog came bounding back and seeing his master in a predicament and hearing the horse groan barked till the evening hills echoed the sound which was deep in proportion to his magnitude. He snuffed round the prostrate group and then he ran up to me it was all he could do—there was no other help at hand to summon. I obeyed him and walked down to the traveller by this time struggling himself free of his steed. His efforts were so vigorous I thought he could not be much hurt but I asked him the question— Are you injured sir? I think he was swearing but am not certain however he was pronouncing some formula which prevented him from replying to me directly. Can I do anything? I asked again. You must just stand on one side he answered as he rose first to his knees and then to his feet. I did whereupon began a heaving stamping clattering process accompanied by a barking and baying which removed me effectually some yards’ distance but I would not be driven quite away till I saw the event. This was finally fortunate the horse was re-established and the dog was silenced with a Down Pilot! The traveller now stooping felt his foot and leg as if trying whether they were sound apparently something ailed them for he halted to the stile whence I had just risen and sat down. I was in the mood for being useful or at least officious I think for I now drew near him again. If you are hurt and want help sir I can fetch some one either from Thornfield Hall or from Hay. Thank you I shall do I have no broken bones—only a sprain and again he stood up and tried his foot but the result extorted an involuntary Ugh! Something of daylight still lingered and the moon was waxing bright I could see him plainly. His figure was enveloped in a riding cloak fur collared and steel clasped its details were not apparent but I traced the general points of middle height and considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face with stern features and a heavy brow his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now he was past youth but had not reached middle-age perhaps he might be thirty-five. I felt no fear of him and but little shyness. Had he been a handsome heroic-looking young gentleman I should not have dared to stand thus questioning him against his will and offering my services unasked. I had hardly ever seen a handsome youth never in my life spoken to one. I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty elegance gallantry fascination but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me and should have shunned them as one would fire lightning or anything else that is bright but antipathetic. If even this stranger had smiled and been good-humoured to me when I addressed him if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and with thanks I should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew inquiries but the frown the roughness of the traveller set me at my ease I retained my station when he waved to me to go and announced— I cannot think of leaving you sir at so late an hour in this solitary lane till I see you are fit to mount your horse. He looked at me when I said this he had hardly turned his eyes in my direction before. I should think you ought to be at home yourself said he if you have a home in this neighbourhood where do you come from? From just below and I am not at all afraid of being out late when it is moonlight I will run over to Hay for you with pleasure if you wish it indeed I am going there to post a letter. You live just below—do you mean at that house with the battlements? pointing to Thornfield Hall on which the moon cast a hoary gleam bringing it out distinct and pale from the woods that by contrast with the western sky now seemed one mass of shadow. Yes sir. Whose house is it? Mr Rochester’s. Do you know Mr Rochester? No I have never seen him. He is not resident then? No. Can you tell me where he is? I cannot. You are not a servant at the hall of course. You are— He stopped ran his eye over my dress which as usual was quite simple a black merino cloak a black beaver bonnet neither of them half fine enough for a lady’s-maid. He seemed puzzled to decide what I was I helped him. I am the governess. Ah the governess! he repeated deuce take me if I had not forgotten! The governess! and again my raiment underwent scrutiny. In two minutes he rose from the stile his face expressed pain when he tried to move. I cannot commission you to fetch help he said but you may help me a little yourself if you will be so kind. Yes sir. You have not an umbrella that I can use as a stick? No. Try to get hold of my horse’s bridle and lead him to me you are not afraid? I should have been afraid to touch a horse when alone but when told to do it I was disposed to obey. I put down my muff on the stile and went up to the tall steed I endeavoured to catch the bridle but it was a spirited thing and would not let me come near its head I made effort on effort though in vain meantime I was mortally afraid of its trampling fore-feet. The traveller waited and watched for some time and at last he laughed. I was mortally afraid of its trampling forefeet I see he said the mountain will never be brought to Mahomet so all you can do is to aid Mahomet to go to the mountain I must beg of you to come here. I came. Excuse me he continued necessity compels me to make you useful. He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder and leaning on me with some stress limped to his horse. Having once caught the bridle he mastered it directly and sprang to his saddle grimacing grimly as he made the effort for it wrenched his sprain. Now said he releasing his under lip from a hard bite just hand me my whip it lies there under the hedge. I sought it and found it. Thank you now make haste with the letter to Hay and return as fast as you can. A touch of a spurred heel made his horse first start and rear and then bound away the dog rushed in his traces all three vanished Like heath that in the wilderness     The wild wind whirls away. I took up my muff and walked on. The incident had occurred and was gone for me it was an incident of no moment no romance no interest in a sense yet it marked with change one single hour of a monotonous life. My help had been needed and claimed I had given it I was pleased to have done something trivial transitory though the deed was it was yet an active thing and I was weary of an existence all passive. The new face too was like a new picture introduced to the gallery of memory and it was dissimilar to all the others hanging there firstly because it was masculine and secondly because it was dark strong and stern. I had it still before me when I entered Hay and slipped the letter into the post-office I saw it as I walked fast down-hill all the way home. When I came to the stile I stopped a minute looked round and listened with an idea that a horse’s hoofs might ring on the causeway again and that a rider in a cloak and a Gytrash-like Newfoundland dog might be again apparent I saw only the hedge and a pollard willow before me rising up still and straight to meet the moonbeams I heard only the faintest waft of wind roaming fitful among the trees round Thornfield a mile distant and when I glanced down in the direction of the murmur my eye traversing the hall-front caught a light kindling in a window it reminded me that I was late and I hurried on. I did not like re-entering Thornfield. To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation to cross the silent hall to ascend the darksome staircase to seek my own lonely little room and then to meet tranquil Mrs Fairfax and spend the long winter evening with her and her only was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk—to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too still existence of an existence whose very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined! Yes just as much good as it would do a man tired of sitting still in a too easy chair to take a long walk and just as natural was the wish to stir under my circumstances as it would be under his. I lingered at the gates I lingered on the lawn I paced backwards and forwards on the pavement the shutters of the glass door were closed I could not see into the interior and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house—from the grey hollow filled with rayless cells as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me—a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud the moon ascending it in solemn march her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops from behind which she had come far and farther below her and aspired to the zenith midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance and for those trembling stars that followed her course they made my heart tremble my veins glow when I viewed them. Little things recall us to earth the clock struck in the hall that sufficed I turned from moon and stars opened a side-door and went in. The hall was not dark nor yet was it lit only by the high-hung bronze lamp a warm glow suffused both it and the lower steps of the oak staircase. This ruddy shine issued from the great dining-room whose two-leaved door stood open and showed a genial fire in the grate glancing on marble hearth and brass fire-irons and revealing purple draperies and polished furniture in the most pleasant radiance. It revealed too a group near the mantelpiece I had scarcely caught it and scarcely become aware of a cheerful mingling of voices amongst which I seemed to distinguish the tones of Adèle when the door closed. I hastened to Mrs Fairfax’s room there was a fire there too but no candle and no Mrs Fairfax. Instead all alone sitting upright on the rug and gazing with gravity at the blaze I beheld a great black and white long-haired dog just like the Gytrash of the lane. It was so like it that I went forward and said—Pilot and the thing got up and came to me and snuffed me. I caressed him and he wagged his great tail but he looked an eerie creature to be alone with and I could not tell whence he had come. I rang the bell for I wanted a candle and I wanted too to get an account of this visitant. Leah entered. What dog is this? He came with master. With whom? With master—Mr Rochester—he is just arrived. Indeed! and is Mrs Fairfax with him? Yes and Miss Adèle they are in the dining-room and John is gone for a surgeon for master has had an accident his horse fell and his ankle is sprained. Did the horse fall in Hay Lane? Yes coming down-hill it slipped on some ice. Ah! Bring me a candle will you Leah? Leah brought it she entered followed by Mrs Fairfax who repeated the news adding that Mr Carter the surgeon was come and was now with Mr Rochester then she hurried out to give orders about tea and I went upstairs to take off my things. ', 'Mr Rochester it seems by the surgeon’s orders went to bed early that night nor did he rise soon next morning. When he did come down it was to attend to business his agent and some of his tenants were arrived and waiting to speak with him. Adèle and I had now to vacate the library it would be in daily requisition as a reception-room for callers. A fire was lit in an apartment upstairs and there I carried our books and arranged it for the future schoolroom. I discerned in the course of the morning that Thornfield Hall was a changed place no longer silent as a church it echoed every hour or two to a knock at the door or a clang of the bell steps too often traversed the hall and new voices spoke in different keys below a rill from the outer world was flowing through it it had a master for my part I liked it better. Adèle was not easy to teach that day she could not apply she kept running to the door and looking over the banisters to see if she could get a glimpse of Mr Rochester then she coined pretexts to go downstairs in order as I shrewdly suspected to visit the library where I knew she was not wanted then when I got a little angry and made her sit still she continued to talk incessantly of her ami Monsieur Edouard Fairfax de Rochester as she dubbed him I had not before heard his prenomens and to conjecture what presents he had brought her for it appears he had intimated the night before that when his luggage came from Millcote there would be found amongst it a little box in whose contents she had an interest. Et cela doit signifier said she qu’il y aura là dedans un cadeau pour moi et peut-être pour vous aussi mademoiselle. Monsieur a parlé de vous il m’a demandé le nom de ma gouvernante et si elle n’était pas une petite personne assez mince et un peu pâle. J’ai dit qu’oui car c’est vrai n’est-ce pas mademoiselle? I and my pupil dined as usual in Mrs Fairfax’s parlour the afternoon was wild and snowy and we passed it in the schoolroom. At dark I allowed Adèle to put away books and work and to run downstairs for from the comparative silence below and from the cessation of appeals to the door-bell I conjectured that Mr Rochester was now at liberty. Left alone I walked to the window but nothing was to be seen thence twilight and snowflakes together thickened the air and hid the very shrubs on the lawn. I let down the curtain and went back to the fireside. In the clear embers I was tracing a view not unlike a picture I remembered to have seen of the castle of Heidelberg on the Rhine when Mrs Fairfax came in breaking up by her entrance the fiery mosaic I had been piercing together and scattering too some heavy unwelcome thoughts that were beginning to throng on my solitude. Mr Rochester would be glad if you and your pupil would take tea with him in the drawing-room this evening said she he has been so much engaged all day that he could not ask to see you before. When is his tea-time? I inquired. Oh at six o’clock he keeps early hours in the country. You had better change your frock now I will go with you and fasten it. Here is a candle. Is it necessary to change my frock? Yes you had better I always dress for the evening when Mr Rochester is here. This additional ceremony seemed somewhat stately however I repaired to my room and with Mrs Fairfax’s aid replaced my black stuff dress by one of black silk the best and the only additional one I had except one of light grey which in my Lowood notions of the toilette I thought too fine to be worn except on first-rate occasions. You want a brooch said Mrs Fairfax. I had a single little pearl ornament which Miss Temple gave me as a parting keepsake I put it on and then we went downstairs. Unused as I was to strangers it was rather a trial to appear thus formally summoned in Mr Rochester’s presence. I let Mrs Fairfax precede me into the dining-room and kept in her shade as we crossed that apartment and passing the arch whose curtain was now dropped entered the elegant recess beyond. Two wax candles stood lighted on the table and two on the mantelpiece basking in the light and heat of a superb fire lay Pilot—Adèle knelt near him. Half reclined on a couch appeared Mr Rochester his foot supported by the cushion he was looking at Adèle and the dog the fire shone full on his face. I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty eyebrows his square forehead made squarer by the horizontal sweep of his black hair. I recognised his decisive nose more remarkable for character than beauty his full nostrils denoting I thought choler his grim mouth chin and jaw—yes all three were very grim and no mistake. His shape now divested of cloak I perceived harmonised in squareness with his physiognomy I suppose it was a good figure in the athletic sense of the term—broad chested and thin flanked though neither tall nor graceful. Mr Rochester must have been aware of the entrance of Mrs Fairfax and myself but it appeared he was not in the mood to notice us for he never lifted his head as we approached. Here is Miss Eyre sir said Mrs Fairfax in her quiet way. He bowed still not taking his eyes from the group of the dog and child. Let Miss Eyre be seated said he and there was something in the forced stiff bow in the impatient yet formal tone which seemed further to express What the deuce is it to me whether Miss Eyre be there or not? At this moment I am not disposed to accost her. I sat down quite disembarrassed. A reception of finished politeness would probably have confused me I could not have returned or repaid it by answering grace and elegance on my part but harsh caprice laid me under no obligation on the contrary a decent quiescence under the freak of manner gave me the advantage. Besides the eccentricity of the proceeding was piquant I felt interested to see how he would go on. He went on as a statue would that is he neither spoke nor moved. Mrs Fairfax seemed to think it necessary that some one should be amiable and she began to talk. Kindly as usual—and as usual rather trite—she condoled with him on the pressure of business he had had all day on the annoyance it must have been to him with that painful sprain then she commended his patience and perseverance in going through with it. Madam I should like some tea was the sole rejoinder she got. She hastened to ring the bell and when the tray came she proceeded to arrange the cups spoons &c. with assiduous celerity. I and Adèle went to the table but the master did not leave his couch. Will you hand Mr Rochester’s cup? said Mrs Fairfax to me Adèle might perhaps spill it. I did as requested. As he took the cup from my hand Adèle thinking the moment propitious for making a request in my favour cried out— N’est-ce pas monsieur qu’il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre dans votre petit coffre? Who talks of cadeaux? said he gruffly. Did you expect a present Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents? and he searched my face with eyes that I saw were dark irate and piercing. I hardly know sir I have little experience of them they are generally thought pleasant things. Generally thought? But what do you think? I should be obliged to take time sir before I could give you an answer worthy of your acceptance a present has many faces to it has it not? and one should consider all before pronouncing an opinion as to its nature. Miss Eyre you are not so unsophisticated as Adèle she demands a ‘cadeau’ clamorously the moment she sees me you beat about the bush. Because I have less confidence in my deserts than Adèle has she can prefer the claim of old acquaintance and the right too of custom for she says you have always been in the habit of giving her playthings but if I had to make out a case I should be puzzled since I am a stranger and have done nothing to entitle me to an acknowledgment. Oh don’t fall back on over-modesty! I have examined Adèle and find you have taken great pains with her she is not bright she has no talents yet in a short time she has made much improvement. Sir you have now given me my ‘cadeau’ I am obliged to you it is the meed teachers most covet—praise of their pupils’ progress. Humph! said Mr Rochester and he took his tea in silence. Come to the fire said the master when the tray was taken away and Mrs Fairfax had settled into a corner with her knitting while Adèle was leading me by the hand round the room showing me the beautiful books and ornaments on the consoles and chiffonnières. We obeyed as in duty bound Adèle wanted to take a seat on my knee but she was ordered to amuse herself with Pilot. You have been resident in my house three months? Yes sir. And you came from—? From Lowood school in ——shire. Ah! a charitable concern. How long were you there? Eight years. Eight years! you must be tenacious of life. I thought half the time in such a place would have done up any constitution! No wonder you have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night I thought unaccountably of fairy tales and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse I am not sure yet. Who are your parents? I have none. Nor ever had I suppose do you remember them? No. I thought not. And so you were waiting for your people when you sat on that stile? For whom sir? For the men in green it was a proper moonlight evening for them. Did I break through one of your rings that you spread that damned ice on the causeway? I shook my head. The men in green all forsook England a hundred years ago said I speaking as seriously as he had done. And not even in Hay Lane or the fields about it could you find a trace of them. I don’t think either summer or harvest or winter moon will ever shine on their revels more. Mrs Fairfax had dropped her knitting and with raised eyebrows seemed wondering what sort of talk this was. Well resumed Mr Rochester if you disown parents you must have some sort of kinsfolk uncles and aunts? No none that I ever saw. And your home? I have none. Where do your brothers and sisters live? I have no brothers or sisters. Who recommended you to come here? I advertised and Mrs Fairfax answered my advertisement. Yes said the good lady who now knew what ground we were upon and I am daily thankful for the choice Providence led me to make. Miss Eyre has been an invaluable companion to me and a kind and careful teacher to Adèle. Don’t trouble yourself to give her a character returned Mr Rochester eulogiums will not bias me I shall judge for myself. She began by felling my horse. Sir? said Mrs Fairfax. I have to thank her for this sprain. The widow looked bewildered. Miss Eyre have you ever lived in a town? No sir. Have you seen much society? None but the pupils and teachers of Lowood and now the inmates of Thornfield. Have you read much? Only such books as came in my way and they have not been numerous or very learned. You have lived the life of a nun no doubt you are well drilled in religious forms—Brocklehurst who I understand directs Lowood is a parson is he not? Yes sir. And you girls probably worshipped him as a convent full of religieuses would worship their director. Oh no. You are very cool! No! What! a novice not worship her priest! That sounds blasphemous. I disliked Mr Brocklehurst and I was not alone in the feeling. He is a harsh man at once pompous and meddling he cut off our hair and for economy’s sake bought us bad needles and thread with which we could hardly sew. That was very false economy remarked Mrs Fairfax who now again caught the drift of the dialogue. And was that the head and front of his offending? demanded Mr Rochester. He starved us when he had the sole superintendence of the provision department before the committee was appointed and he bored us with long lectures once a week and with evening readings from books of his own inditing about sudden deaths and judgments which made us afraid to go to bed. What age were you when you went to Lowood? About ten. And you stayed there eight years you are now then eighteen? I assented. Arithmetic you see is useful without its aid I should hardly have been able to guess your age. It is a point difficult to fix where the features and countenance are so much at variance as in your case. And now what did you learn at Lowood? Can you play? A little. Of course that is the established answer. Go into the library—I mean if you please.—Excuse my tone of command I am used to say ‘Do this’ and it is done I cannot alter my customary habits for one new inmate.—Go then into the library take a candle with you leave the door open sit down to the piano and play a tune. I departed obeying his directions. Enough! he called out in a few minutes. You play a little I see like any other English school-girl perhaps rather better than some but not well. I closed the piano and returned. Mr Rochester continued— Adèle showed me some sketches this morning which she said were yours. I don’t know whether they were entirely of your doing probably a master aided you? No indeed! I interjected. Ah! that pricks pride. Well fetch me your portfolio if you can vouch for its contents being original but don’t pass your word unless you are certain I can recognise patchwork. Then I will say nothing and you shall judge for yourself sir. I brought the portfolio from the library. Approach the table said he and I wheeled it to his couch. Adèle and Mrs Fairfax drew near to see the pictures. No crowding said Mr Rochester take the drawings from my hand as I finish with them but don’t push your faces up to mine. He deliberately scrutinised each sketch and painting. Three he laid aside the others when he had examined them he swept from him. Take them off to the other table Mrs Fairfax said he and look at them with Adèle—you glancing at me resume your seat and answer my questions. I perceive those pictures were done by one hand was that hand yours? Yes. And when did you find time to do them? They have taken much time and some thought. I did them in the last two vacations I spent at Lowood when I had no other occupation. Where did you get your copies? Out of my head. That head I see now on your shoulders? Yes sir. Has it other furniture of the same kind within? I should think it may have I should hope—better. He spread the pictures before him and again surveyed them alternately. While he is so occupied I will tell you reader what they are and first I must premise that they are nothing wonderful. The subjects had indeed risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with the spiritual eye before I attempted to embody them they were striking but my hand would not second my fancy and in each case it had wrought out but a pale portrait of the thing I had conceived. These pictures were in water-colours. The first represented clouds low and livid rolling over a swollen sea all the distance was in eclipse so too was the foreground or rather the nearest billows for there was no land. One gleam of light lifted into relief a half-submerged mast on which sat a cormorant dark and large with wings flecked with foam its beak held a gold bracelet set with gems that I had touched with as brilliant tints as my palette could yield and as glittering distinctness as my pencil could impart. Sinking below the bird and mast a drowned corpse glanced through the green water a fair arm was the only limb clearly visible whence the bracelet had been washed or torn. The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak of a hill with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze. Beyond and above spread an expanse of sky dark blue as at twilight rising into the sky was a woman’s shape to the bust portrayed in tints as dusk and soft as I could combine. The dim forehead was crowned with a star the lineaments below were seen as through the suffusion of vapour the eyes shone dark and wild the hair streamed shadowy like a beamless cloud torn by storm or by electric travail. On the neck lay a pale reflection like moonlight the same faint lustre touched the train of thin clouds from which rose and bowed this vision of the Evening Star. The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter sky a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances close serried along the horizon. Throwing these into distance rose in the foreground a head—a colossal head inclined towards the iceberg and resting against it. Two thin hands joined under the forehead and supporting it drew up before the lower features a sable veil a brow quite bloodless white as bone and an eye hollow and fixed blank of meaning but for the glassiness of despair alone were visible. Above the temples amidst wreathed turban folds of black drapery vague in its character and consistency as cloud gleamed a ring of white flame gemmed with sparkles of a more lurid tinge. This pale crescent was the likeness of a kingly crown what it diademed was the shape which shape had none. Were you happy when you painted these pictures? asked Mr Rochester presently. I was absorbed sir yes and I was happy. To paint them in short was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known. That is not saying much. Your pleasures by your own account have been few but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist’s dreamland while you blent and arranged these strange tints. Did you sit at them long each day? I had nothing else to do because it was the vacation and I sat at them from morning till noon and from noon till night the length of the midsummer days favoured my inclination to apply. And you felt self-satisfied with the result of your ardent labours? Far from it. I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork in each case I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realise. Not quite you have secured the shadow of your thought but no more probably. You had not enough of the artist’s skill and science to give it full being yet the drawings are for a school-girl peculiar. As to the thoughts they are elfish. These eyes in the Evening Star you must have seen in a dream. How could you make them look so clear and yet not at all brilliant? for the planet above quells their rays. And what meaning is that in their solemn depth? And who taught you to paint wind? There is a high gale in that sky and on this hill-top. Where did you see Latmos? For that is Latmos. There! put the drawings away! I had scarce tied the strings of the portfolio when looking at his watch he said abruptly— It is nine o’clock what are you about Miss Eyre to let Adèle sit up so long? Take her to bed. Adèle went to kiss him before quitting the room he endured the caress but scarcely seemed to relish it more than Pilot would have done nor so much. I wish you all good-night now said he making a movement of the hand towards the door in token that he was tired of our company and wished to dismiss us. Mrs Fairfax folded up her knitting I took my portfolio we curtseyed to him received a frigid bow in return and so withdrew. You said Mr Rochester was not strikingly peculiar Mrs Fairfax I observed when I rejoined her in her room after putting Adèle to bed. Well is he? I think so he is very changeful and abrupt. True no doubt he may appear so to a stranger but I am so accustomed to his manner I never think of it and then if he has peculiarities of temper allowance should be made. Why? Partly because it is his nature—and we can none of us help our nature and partly because he has painful thoughts no doubt to harass him and make his spirits unequal. What about? Family troubles for one thing. But he has no family. Not now but he has had—or at least relatives. He lost his elder brother a few years since. His elder brother? Yes. The present Mr Rochester has not been very long in possession of the property only about nine years. Nine years is a tolerable time. Was he so very fond of his brother as to be still inconsolable for his loss? Why no—perhaps not. I believe there were some misunderstandings between them. Mr Rowland Rochester was not quite just to Mr Edward and perhaps he prejudiced his father against him. The old gentleman was fond of money and anxious to keep the family estate together. He did not like to diminish the property by division and yet he was anxious that Mr Edward should have wealth too to keep up the consequence of the name and soon after he was of age some steps were taken that were not quite fair and made a great deal of mischief. Old Mr Rochester and Mr Rowland combined to bring Mr Edward into what he considered a painful position for the sake of making his fortune what the precise nature of that position was I never clearly knew but his spirit could not brook what he had to suffer in it. He is not very forgiving he broke with his family and now for many years he has led an unsettled kind of life. I don’t think he has ever been resident at Thornfield for a fortnight together since the death of his brother without a will left him master of the estate and indeed no wonder he shuns the old place. Why should he shun it? Perhaps he thinks it gloomy. The answer was evasive. I should have liked something clearer but Mrs Fairfax either could not or would not give me more explicit information of the origin and nature of Mr Rochester’s trials. She averred they were a mystery to herself and that what she knew was chiefly from conjecture. It was evident indeed that she wished me to drop the subject which I did accordingly. ', 'For several subsequent days I saw little of Mr Rochester. In the mornings he seemed much engaged with business and in the afternoon gentlemen from Millcote or the neighbourhood called and sometimes stayed to dine with him. When his sprain was well enough to admit of horse exercise he rode out a good deal probably to return these visits as he generally did not come back till late at night. During this interval even Adèle was seldom sent for to his presence and all my acquaintance with him was confined to an occasional rencontre in the hall on the stairs or in the gallery when he would sometimes pass me haughtily and coldly just acknowledging my presence by a distant nod or a cool glance and sometimes bow and smile with gentlemanlike affability. His changes of mood did not offend me because I saw that I had nothing to do with their alternation the ebb and flow depended on causes quite disconnected with me. One day he had had company to dinner and had sent for my portfolio in order doubtless to exhibit its contents the gentlemen went away early to attend a public meeting at Millcote as Mrs Fairfax informed me but the night being wet and inclement Mr Rochester did not accompany them. Soon after they were gone he rang the bell a message came that I and Adèle were to go downstairs. I brushed Adèle’s hair and made her neat and having ascertained that I was myself in my usual Quaker trim where there was nothing to retouch—all being too close and plain braided locks included to admit of disarrangement—we descended Adèle wondering whether the petit coffre was at length come for owing to some mistake its arrival had hitherto been delayed. She was gratified there it stood a little carton on the table when we entered the dining-room. She appeared to know it by instinct. Ma boite! ma boite! exclaimed she running towards it. Yes there is your ‘boite’ at last take it into a corner you genuine daughter of Paris and amuse yourself with disembowelling it said the deep and rather sarcastic voice of Mr Rochester proceeding from the depths of an immense easy-chair at the fireside. And mind he continued don’t bother me with any details of the anatomical process or any notice of the condition of the entrails let your operation be conducted in silence tiens-toi tranquille enfant comprends-tu? Adèle seemed scarcely to need the warning she had already retired to a sofa with her treasure and was busy untying the cord which secured the lid. Having removed this impediment and lifted certain silvery envelopes of tissue paper she merely exclaimed— Oh ciel! Que c’est beau! and then remained absorbed in ecstatic contemplation. Is Miss Eyre there? now demanded the master half rising from his seat to look round to the door near which I still stood. Ah! well come forward be seated here. He drew a chair near his own. I am not fond of the prattle of children he continued for old bachelor as I am I have no pleasant associations connected with their lisp. It would be intolerable to me to pass a whole evening tête-à-tête with a brat. Don’t draw that chair farther off Miss Eyre sit down exactly where I placed it—if you please that is. Confound these civilities! I continually forget them. Nor do I particularly affect simple-minded old ladies. By-the-bye I must have mine in mind it won’t do to neglect her she is a Fairfax or wed to one and blood is said to be thicker than water. He rang and despatched an invitation to Mrs Fairfax who soon arrived knitting-basket in hand. Good evening madam I sent to you for a charitable purpose. I have forbidden Adèle to talk to me about her presents and she is bursting with repletion have the goodness to serve her as auditress and interlocutrice it will be one of the most benevolent acts you ever performed. Adèle indeed no sooner saw Mrs Fairfax than she summoned her to her sofa and there quickly filled her lap with the porcelain the ivory the waxen contents of her boite pouring out meantime explanations and raptures in such broken English as she was mistress of. Now I have performed the part of a good host pursued Mr Rochester put my guests into the way of amusing each other I ought to be at liberty to attend to my own pleasure. Miss Eyre draw your chair still a little farther forward you are yet too far back I cannot see you without disturbing my position in this comfortable chair which I have no mind to do. I did as I was bid though I would much rather have remained somewhat in the shade but Mr Rochester had such a direct way of giving orders it seemed a matter of course to obey him promptly. We were as I have said in the dining-room the lustre which had been lit for dinner filled the room with a festal breadth of light the large fire was all red and clear the purple curtains hung rich and ample before the lofty window and loftier arch everything was still save the subdued chat of Adèle she dared not speak loud and filling up each pause the beating of winter rain against the panes. Mr Rochester as he sat in his damask-covered chair looked different to what I had seen him look before not quite so stern—much less gloomy. There was a smile on his lips and his eyes sparkled whether with wine or not I am not sure but I think it very probable. He was in short in his after-dinner mood more expanded and genial and also more self-indulgent than the frigid and rigid temper of the morning still he looked preciously grim cushioning his massive head against the swelling back of his chair and receiving the light of the fire on his granite-hewn features and in his great dark eyes for he had great dark eyes and very fine eyes too—not without a certain change in their depths sometimes which if it was not softness reminded you at least of that feeling. He had been looking two minutes at the fire and I had been looking the same length of time at him when turning suddenly he caught my gaze fastened on his physiognomy. You examine me Miss Eyre said he do you think me handsome? I should if I had deliberated have replied to this question by something conventionally vague and polite but the answer somehow slipped from my tongue before I was aware—No sir. Ah! By my word! there is something singular about you said he you have the air of a little nonnette quaint quiet grave and simple as you sit with your hands before you and your eyes generally bent on the carpet except by-the-bye when they are directed piercingly to my face as just now for instance and when one asks you a question or makes a remark to which you are obliged to reply you rap out a round rejoinder which if not blunt is at least brusque. What do you mean by it? Sir I was too plain I beg your pardon. I ought to have replied that it was not easy to give an impromptu answer to a question about appearances that tastes mostly differ and that beauty is of little consequence or something of that sort. You ought to have replied no such thing. Beauty of little consequence indeed! And so under pretence of softening the previous outrage of stroking and soothing me into placidity you stick a sly penknife under my ear! Go on what fault do you find with me pray? I suppose I have all my limbs and all my features like any other man? Mr Rochester allow me to disown my first answer I intended no pointed repartee it was only a blunder. Just so I think so and you shall be answerable for it. Criticise me does my forehead not please you? He lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over his brow and showed a solid enough mass of intellectual organs but an abrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should have risen. Now ma’am am I a fool? Far from it sir. You would perhaps think me rude if I inquired in return whether you are a philanthropist? There again! Another stick of the penknife when she pretended to pat my head and that is because I said I did not like the society of children and old women low be it spoken!. No young lady I am not a general philanthropist but I bear a conscience and he pointed to the prominences which are said to indicate that faculty and which fortunately for him were sufficiently conspicuous giving indeed a marked breadth to the upper part of his head and besides I once had a kind of rude tenderness of heart. When I was as old as you I was a feeling fellow enough partial to the unfledged unfostered and unlucky but Fortune has knocked me about since she has even kneaded me with her knuckles and now I flatter myself I am hard and tough as an India-rubber ball pervious though through a chink or two still and with one sentient point in the middle of the lump. Yes does that leave hope for me? Hope of what sir? Of my final re-transformation from India-rubber back to flesh? Decidedly he has had too much wine I thought and I did not know what answer to make to his queer question how could I tell whether he was capable of being re-transformed? You looked very much puzzled Miss Eyre and though you are not pretty any more than I am handsome yet a puzzled air becomes you besides it is convenient for it keeps those searching eyes of yours away from my physiognomy and busies them with the worsted flowers of the rug so puzzle on. Young lady I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night. With this announcement he rose from his chair and stood leaning his arm on the marble mantelpiece in that attitude his shape was seen plainly as well as his face his unusual breadth of chest disproportionate almost to his length of limb. I am sure most people would have thought him an ugly man yet there was so much unconscious pride in his port so much ease in his demeanour such a look of complete indifference to his own external appearance so haughty a reliance on the power of other qualities intrinsic or adventitious to atone for the lack of mere personal attractiveness that in looking at him one inevitably shared the indifference and even in a blind imperfect sense put faith in the confidence. I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night he repeated and that is why I sent for you the fire and the chandelier were not sufficient company for me nor would Pilot have been for none of these can talk. Adèle is a degree better but still far below the mark Mrs Fairfax ditto you I am persuaded can suit me if you will you puzzled me the first evening I invited you down here. I have almost forgotten you since other ideas have driven yours from my head but to-night I am resolved to be at ease to dismiss what importunes and recall what pleases. It would please me now to draw you out—to learn more of you—therefore speak. Instead of speaking I smiled and not a very complacent or submissive smile either. Speak he urged. What about sir? Whatever you like. I leave both the choice of subject and the manner of treating it entirely to yourself. Accordingly I sat and said nothing If he expects me to talk for the mere sake of talking and showing off he will find he has addressed himself to the wrong person I thought. You are dumb Miss Eyre. I was dumb still. He bent his head a little towards me and with a single hasty glance seemed to dive into my eyes. Stubborn? he said and annoyed. Ah! it is consistent. I put my request in an absurd almost insolent form. Miss Eyre I beg your pardon. The fact is once for all I don’t wish to treat you like an inferior that is correcting himself I claim only such superiority as must result from twenty years’ difference in age and a century’s advance in experience. This is legitimate et j’y tiens as Adèle would say and it is by virtue of this superiority and this alone that I desire you to have the goodness to talk to me a little now and divert my thoughts which are galled with dwelling on one point—cankering as a rusty nail. He had deigned an explanation almost an apology and I did not feel insensible to his condescension and would not seem so. I am willing to amuse you if I can sir—quite willing but I cannot introduce a topic because how do I know what will interest you? Ask me questions and I will do my best to answer them. Then in the first place do you agree with me that I have a right to be a little masterful abrupt perhaps exacting sometimes on the grounds I stated namely that I am old enough to be your father and that I have battled through a varied experience with many men of many nations and roamed over half the globe while you have lived quietly with one set of people in one house? Do as you please sir. That is no answer or rather it is a very irritating because a very evasive one. Reply clearly. I don’t think sir you have a right to command me merely because you are older than I or because you have seen more of the world than I have your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience. Humph! Promptly spoken. But I won’t allow that seeing that it would never suit my case as I have made an indifferent not to say a bad use of both advantages. Leaving superiority out of the question then you must still agree to receive my orders now and then without being piqued or hurt by the tone of command. Will you? I smiled I thought to myself Mr Rochester is peculiar—he seems to forget that he pays me £30 per annum for receiving his orders. The smile is very well said he catching instantly the passing expression but speak too. I was thinking sir that very few masters would trouble themselves to inquire whether or not their paid subordinates were piqued and hurt by their orders. Paid subordinates! What! you are my paid subordinate are you? Oh yes I had forgotten the salary! Well then on that mercenary ground will you agree to let me hector a little? No sir not on that ground but on the ground that you did forget it and that you care whether or not a dependent is comfortable in his dependency I agree heartily. And will you consent to dispense with a great many conventional forms and phrases without thinking that the omission arises from insolence? I am sure sir I should never mistake informality for insolence one I rather like the other nothing free-born would submit to even for a salary. Humbug! Most things free-born will submit to anything for a salary therefore keep to yourself and don’t venture on generalities of which you are intensely ignorant. However I mentally shake hands with you for your answer despite its inaccuracy and as much for the manner in which it was said as for the substance of the speech the manner was frank and sincere one does not often see such a manner no on the contrary affectation or coldness or stupid coarse-minded misapprehension of one’s meaning are the usual rewards of candour. Not three in three thousand raw school-girl-governesses would have answered me as you have just done. But I don’t mean to flatter you if you are cast in a different mould to the majority it is no merit of yours Nature did it. And then after all I go too fast in my conclusions for what I yet know you may be no better than the rest you may have intolerable defects to counterbalance your few good points. And so may you I thought. My eye met his as the idea crossed my mind he seemed to read the glance answering as if its import had been spoken as well as imagined— Yes yes you are right said he I have plenty of faults of my own I know it and I don’t wish to palliate them I assure you. God wot I need not be too severe about others I have a past existence a series of deeds a colour of life to contemplate within my own breast which might well call my sneers and censures from my neighbours to myself. I started or rather for like other defaulters I like to lay half the blame on ill fortune and adverse circumstances was thrust on to a wrong tack at the age of one-and-twenty and have never recovered the right course since but I might have been very different I might have been as good as you—wiser—almost as stainless. I envy you your peace of mind your clean conscience your unpolluted memory. Little girl a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure—an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment is it not? How was your memory when you were eighteen sir? All right then limpid salubrious no gush of bilge water had turned it to fetid puddle. I was your equal at eighteen—quite your equal. Nature meant me to be on the whole a good man Miss Eyre one of the better kind and you see I am not so. You would say you don’t see it at least I flatter myself I read as much in your eye beware by-the-bye what you express with that organ I am quick at interpreting its language. Then take my word for it—I am not a villain you are not to suppose that—not to attribute to me any such bad eminence but owing I verily believe rather to circumstances than to my natural bent I am a trite commonplace sinner hackneyed in all the poor petty dissipations with which the rich and worthless try to put on life. Do you wonder that I avow this to you? Know that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances’ secrets people will instinctively find out as I have done that it is not your forte to tell of yourself but to listen while others talk of themselves they will feel too that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion but with a kind of innate sympathy not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations. How do you know?—how can you guess all this sir? I know it well therefore I proceed almost as freely as if I were writing my thoughts in a diary. You would say I should have been superior to circumstances so I should—so I should but you see I was not. When fate wronged me I had not the wisdom to remain cool I turned desperate then I degenerated. Now when any vicious simpleton excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry I cannot flatter myself that I am better than he I am forced to confess that he and I are on a level. I wish I had stood firm—God knows I do! Dread remorse when you are tempted to err Miss Eyre remorse is the poison of life. Repentance is said to be its cure sir. It is not its cure. Reformation may be its cure and I could reform—I have strength yet for that—if—but where is the use of thinking of it hampered burdened cursed as I am? Besides since happiness is irrevocably denied me I have a right to get pleasure out of life and I will get it cost what it may. Then you will degenerate still more sir. Possibly yet why should I if I can get sweet fresh pleasure? And I may get it as sweet and fresh as the wild honey the bee gathers on the moor. It will sting—it will taste bitter sir. How do you know?—you never tried it. How very serious—how very solemn you look and you are as ignorant of the matter as this cameo head taking one from the mantelpiece. You have no right to preach to me you neophyte that have not passed the porch of life and are absolutely unacquainted with its mysteries. I only remind you of your own words sir you said error brought remorse and you pronounced remorse the poison of existence. And who talks of error now? I scarcely think the notion that flittered across my brain was an error. I believe it was an inspiration rather than a temptation it was very genial very soothing—I know that. Here it comes again! It is no devil I assure you or if it be it has put on the robes of an angel of light. I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart. Distrust it sir it is not a true angel. Once more how do you know? By what instinct do you pretend to distinguish between a fallen seraph of the abyss and a messenger from the eternal throne—between a guide and a seducer? I judged by your countenance sir which was troubled when you said the suggestion had returned upon you. I feel sure it will work you more misery if you listen to it. Not at all—it bears the most gracious message in the world for the rest you are not my conscience-keeper so don’t make yourself uneasy. Here come in bonny wanderer! He said this as if he spoke to a vision viewless to any eye but his own then folding his arms which he had half extended on his chest he seemed to enclose in their embrace the invisible being. Now he continued again addressing me I have received the pilgrim—a disguised deity as I verily believe. Already it has done me good my heart was a sort of charnel it will now be a shrine. To speak truth sir I don’t understand you at all I cannot keep up the conversation because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing I know you said you were not as good as you should like to be and that you regretted your own imperfection—one thing I can comprehend you intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane. It seems to me that if you tried hard you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections to which you might revert with pleasure. Justly thought rightly said Miss Eyre and at this moment I am paving hell with energy. Sir? I am laying down good intentions which I believe durable as flint. Certainly my associates and pursuits shall be other than they have been. And better? And better—so much better as pure ore is than foul dross. You seem to doubt me I don’t doubt myself I know what my aim is what my motives are and at this moment I pass a law unalterable as that of the Medes and Persians that both are right. They cannot be sir if they require a new statute to legalise them. They are Miss Eyre though they absolutely require a new statute unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules. That sounds a dangerous maxim sir because one can see at once that it is liable to abuse. Sententious sage! so it is but I swear by my household gods not to abuse it. You are human and fallible. I am so are you—what then? The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted. What power? That of saying of any strange unsanctioned line of action—‘Let it be right.’ ‘Let it be right’—the very words you have pronounced them. May it be right then I said as I rose deeming it useless to continue a discourse which was all darkness to me and besides sensible that the character of my interlocutor was beyond my penetration at least beyond its present reach and feeling the uncertainty the vague sense of insecurity which accompanies a conviction of ignorance. Where are you going? To put Adèle to bed it is past her bedtime. You are afraid of me because I talk like a Sphynx. Your language is enigmatical sir but though I am bewildered I am certainly not afraid. You are afraid—your self-love dreads a blunder. In that sense I do feel apprehensive—I have no wish to talk nonsense. If you did it would be in such a grave quiet manner I should mistake it for sense. Do you never laugh Miss Eyre? Don’t trouble yourself to answer—I see you laugh rarely but you can laugh very merrily believe me you are not naturally austere any more than I am naturally vicious. The Lowood constraint still clings to you somewhat controlling your features muffling your voice and restricting your limbs and you fear in the presence of a man and a brother—or father or master or what you will—to smile too gaily speak too freely or move too quickly but in time I think you will learn to be natural with me as I find it impossible to be conventional with you and then your looks and movements will have more vivacity and variety than they dare offer now. I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage a vivid restless resolute captive is there were it but free it would soar cloud-high. You are still bent on going? It has struck nine sir. Never mind—wait a minute Adèle is not ready to go to bed yet. My position Miss Eyre with my back to the fire and my face to the room favours observation. While talking to you I have also occasionally watched Adèle I have my own reasons for thinking her a curious study—reasons that I may nay that I shall impart to you some day. She pulled out of her box about ten minutes ago a little pink silk frock rapture lit her face as she unfolded it coquetry runs in her blood blends with her brains and seasons the marrow of her bones. ‘Il faut que je l’essaie!’ cried she ‘et à l’instant même!’ and she rushed out of the room. She is now with Sophie undergoing a robing process in a few minutes she will re-enter and I know what I shall see—a miniature of Céline Varens as she used to appear on the boards at the rising of—But never mind that. However my tenderest feelings are about to receive a shock such is my presentiment stay now to see whether it will be realised. Ere long Adèle’s little foot was heard tripping across the hall. She entered transformed as her guardian had predicted. A dress of rose-coloured satin very short and as full in the skirt as it could be gathered replaced the brown frock she had previously worn a wreath of rosebuds circled her forehead her feet were dressed in silk stockings and small white satin sandals. Est-ce que ma robe va bien? cried she bounding forwards et mes souliers? et mes bas? Tenez je crois que je vais danser! And spreading out her dress she chasséed across the room till having reached Mr Rochester she wheeled lightly round before him on tip-toe then dropped on one knee at his feet exclaiming— Monsieur je vous remercie mille fois de votre bonté then rising she added C’est comme cela que maman faisait n’est-ce pas monsieur? Pre-cise-ly! was the answer and ‘comme cela’ she charmed my English gold out of my British breeches’ pocket. I have been green too Miss Eyre—ay grass green not a more vernal tint freshens you now than once freshened me. My Spring is gone however but it has left me that French floweret on my hands which in some moods I would fain be rid of. Not valuing now the root whence it sprang having found that it was of a sort which nothing but gold dust could manure I have but half a liking to the blossom especially when it looks so artificial as just now. I keep it and rear it rather on the Roman Catholic principle of expiating numerous sins great or small by one good work. I’ll explain all this some day. Good-night. ', 'Mr Rochester did on a future occasion explain it. It was one afternoon when he chanced to meet me and Adèle in the grounds and while she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock he asked me to walk up and down a long beech avenue within sight of her. He then said that she was the daughter of a French opera-dancer Céline Varens towards whom he had once cherished what he called a grande passion. This passion Céline had professed to return with even superior ardour. He thought himself her idol ugly as he was he believed as he said that she preferred his taille d’athlète to the elegance of the Apollo Belvidere. And Miss Eyre so much was I flattered by this preference of the Gallic sylph for her British gnome that I installed her in an hotel gave her a complete establishment of servants a carriage cashmeres diamonds dentelles &c. In short I began the process of ruining myself in the received style like any other spoony. I had not it seems the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre. I had—as I deserved to have—the fate of all other spoonies. Happening to call one evening when Céline did not expect me I found her out but it was a warm night and I was tired with strolling through Paris so I sat down in her boudoir happy to breathe the air consecrated so lately by her presence. No—I exaggerate I never thought there was any consecrating virtue about her it was rather a sort of pastille perfume she had left a scent of musk and amber than an odour of sanctity. I was just beginning to stifle with the fumes of conservatory flowers and sprinkled essences when I bethought myself to open the window and step out on to the balcony. It was moonlight and gaslight besides and very still and serene. The balcony was furnished with a chair or two I sat down and took out a cigar—I will take one now if you will excuse me. Here ensued a pause filled up by the producing and lighting of a cigar having placed it to his lips and breathed a trail of Havannah incense on the freezing and sunless air he went on— I liked bonbons too in those days Miss Eyre and I was croquant—overlook the barbarism—croquant chocolate comfits and smoking alternately watching meantime the equipages that rolled along the fashionable streets towards the neighbouring opera-house when in an elegant close carriage drawn by a beautiful pair of English horses and distinctly seen in the brilliant city-night I recognised the ‘voiture’ I had given Céline. She was returning of course my heart thumped with impatience against the iron rails I leant upon. The carriage stopped as I had expected at the hotel door my flame that is the very word for an opera inamorata alighted though muffed in a cloak—an unnecessary encumbrance by-the-bye on so warm a June evening—I knew her instantly by her little foot seen peeping from the skirt of her dress as she skipped from the carriage-step. Bending over the balcony I was about to murmur ‘Mon ange’—in a tone of course which should be audible to the ear of love alone—when a figure jumped from the carriage after her cloaked also but that was a spurred heel which had rung on the pavement and that was a hatted head which now passed under the arched porte cochère of the hotel. You never felt jealousy did you Miss Eyre? Of course not I need not ask you because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to experience your soul sleeps the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it. You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I tell you—and you may mark my words—you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel where the whole of life’s stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult foam and noise either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current—as I am now. I like this day I like that sky of steel I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost. I like Thornfield its antiquity its retirement its old crow-trees and thorn-trees its grey façade and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin and yet how long have I abhorred the very thought of it shunned it like a great plague-house? How I do still abhor— He ground his teeth and was silent he arrested his step and struck his boot against the hard ground. Some hated thought seemed to have him in its grip and to hold him so tightly that he could not advance. We were ascending the avenue when he thus paused the hall was before us. Lifting his eye to its battlements he cast over them a glare such as I never saw before or since. Pain shame ire impatience disgust detestation seemed momentarily to hold a quivering conflict in the large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow. Wild was the wrestle which should be paramount but another feeling rose and triumphed something hard and cynical self-willed and resolute it settled his passion and petrified his countenance he went on— During the moment I was silent Miss Eyre I was arranging a point with my destiny. She stood there by that beech-trunk—a hag like one of those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres. ‘You like Thornfield?’ she said lifting her finger and then she wrote in the air a memento which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the house-front between the upper and lower row of windows ‘Like it if you can! Like it if you dare!’ ‘I will like it’ said I ‘I dare like it’ and he subjoined moodily I will keep my word I will break obstacles to happiness to goodness—yes goodness. I wish to be a better man than I have been than I am as Job’s leviathan broke the spear the dart and the habergeon hindrances which others count as iron and brass I will esteem but straw and rotten wood. Adèle here ran before him with her shuttlecock. Away! he cried harshly keep at a distance child or go in to Sophie! Continuing then to pursue his walk in silence I ventured to recall him to the point whence he had abruptly diverged— Did you leave the balcony sir I asked when Mdlle. Varens entered? I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question but on the contrary waking out of his scowling abstraction he turned his eyes towards me and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. Oh I had forgotten Céline! Well to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier I seemed to hear a hiss and the green snake of jealousy rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony glided within my waistcoat and ate its way in two minutes to my heart’s core. Strange! he exclaimed suddenly starting again from the point. Strange that I should choose you for the confidant of all this young lady passing strange that you should listen to me quietly as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-mistresses to a quaint inexperienced girl like you! But the last singularity explains the first as I intimated once before you with your gravity considerateness and caution were made to be the recipient of secrets. Besides I know what sort of a mind I have placed in communication with my own I know it is one not liable to take infection it is a peculiar mind it is a unique one. Happily I do not mean to harm it but if I did it would not take harm from me. The more you and I converse the better for while I cannot blight you you may refresh me. After this digression he proceeded— I remained in the balcony. ‘They will come to her boudoir no doubt’ thought I ‘let me prepare an ambush.’ So putting my hand in through the open window I drew the curtain over it leaving only an opening through which I could take observations then I closed the casement all but a chink just wide enough to furnish an outlet to lovers’ whispered vows then I stole back to my chair and as I resumed it the pair came in. My eye was quickly at the aperture. Céline’s chamber-maid entered lit a lamp left it on the table and withdrew. The couple were thus revealed to me clearly both removed their cloaks and there was ‘the Varens’ shining in satin and jewels—my gifts of course—and there was her companion in an officer’s uniform and I knew him for a young roué of a vicomte—a brainless and vicious youth whom I had sometimes met in society and had never thought of hating because I despised him so absolutely. On recognising him the fang of the snake Jealousy was instantly broken because at the same moment my love for Céline sank under an extinguisher. A woman who could betray me for such a rival was not worth contending for she deserved only scorn less however than I who had been her dupe. They began to talk their conversation eased me completely frivolous mercenary heartless and senseless it was rather calculated to weary than enrage a listener. A card of mine lay on the table this being perceived brought my name under discussion. Neither of them possessed energy or wit to belabour me soundly but they insulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way especially Céline who even waxed rather brilliant on my personal defects—deformities she termed them. Now it had been her custom to launch out into fervent admiration of what she called my ‘beauté mâle’ wherein she differed diametrically from you who told me point-blank at the second interview that you did not think me handsome. The contrast struck me at the time and— Adèle here came running up again. Monsieur John has just been to say that your agent has called and wishes to see you. Ah! in that case I must abridge. Opening the window I walked in upon them liberated Céline from my protection gave her notice to vacate her hotel offered her a purse for immediate exigencies disregarded screams hysterics prayers protestations convulsions made an appointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois de Boulogne. Next morning I had the pleasure of encountering him left a bullet in one of his poor etiolated arms feeble as the wing of a chicken in the pip and then thought I had done with the whole crew. But unluckily the Varens six months before had given me this filette Adèle who she affirmed was my daughter and perhaps she may be though I see no proofs of such grim paternity written in her countenance Pilot is more like me than she. Some years after I had broken with the mother she abandoned her child and ran away to Italy with a musician or singer. I acknowledged no natural claim on Adèle’s part to be supported by me nor do I now acknowledge any for I am not her father but hearing that she was quite destitute I e’en took the poor thing out of the slime and mud of Paris and transplanted it here to grow up clean in the wholesome soil of an English country garden. Mrs Fairfax found you to train it but now you know that it is the illegitimate offspring of a French opera-girl you will perhaps think differently of your post and protégée you will be coming to me some day with notice that you have found another place—that you beg me to look out for a new governess &c.—Eh? No Adèle is not answerable for either her mother’s faults or yours I have a regard for her and now that I know she is in a sense parentless—forsaken by her mother and disowned by you sir—I shall cling closer to her than before. How could I possibly prefer the spoilt pet of a wealthy family who would hate her governess as a nuisance to a lonely little orphan who leans towards her as a friend? Oh that is the light in which you view it! Well I must go in now and you too it darkens. But I stayed out a few minutes longer with Adèle and Pilot—ran a race with her and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock. When we went in and I had removed her bonnet and coat I took her on my knee kept her there an hour allowing her to prattle as she liked not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to stray when much noticed and which betrayed in her a superficiality of character inherited probably from her mother hardly congenial to an English mind. Still she had her merits and I was disposed to appreciate all that was good in her to the utmost. I sought in her countenance and features a likeness to Mr Rochester but found none no trait no turn of expression announced relationship. It was a pity if she could but have been proved to resemble him he would have thought more of her. It was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for the night that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr Rochester had told me. As he had said there was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance of the narrative itself a wealthy Englishman’s passion for a French dancer and her treachery to him were every-day matters enough no doubt in society but there was something decidedly strange in the paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized him when he was in the act of expressing the present contentment of his mood and his newly revived pleasure in the old hall and its environs. I meditated wonderingly on this incident but gradually quitting it as I found it for the present inexplicable I turned to the consideration of my master’s manner to myself. The confidence he had thought fit to repose in me seemed a tribute to my discretion I regarded and accepted it as such. His deportment had now for some weeks been more uniform towards me than at the first. I never seemed in his way he did not take fits of chilling hauteur when he met me unexpectedly the encounter seemed welcome he had always a word and sometimes a smile for me when summoned by formal invitation to his presence I was honoured by a cordiality of reception that made me feel I really possessed the power to amuse him and that these evening conferences were sought as much for his pleasure as for my benefit. I indeed talked comparatively little but I heard him talk with relish. It was his nature to be communicative he liked to open to a mind unacquainted with the world glimpses of its scenes and ways I do not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways but such as derived their interest from the great scale on which they were acted the strange novelty by which they were characterised and I had a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered in imagining the new pictures he portrayed and following him in thought through the new regions he disclosed never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion. The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint the friendly frankness as correct as cordial with which he treated me drew me to him. I felt at times as if he were my relation rather than my master yet he was imperious sometimes still but I did not mind that I saw it was his way. So happy so gratified did I become with this new interest added to life that I ceased to pine after kindred my thin crescent-destiny seemed to enlarge the blanks of existence were filled up my bodily health improved I gathered flesh and strength. And was Mr Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No reader gratitude and many associations all pleasurable and genial made his face the object I best liked to see his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults indeed I could not for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud sardonic harsh to inferiority of every description in my secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many others. He was moody too unaccountably so I more than once when sent for to read to him found him sitting in his library alone with his head bent on his folded arms and when he looked up a morose almost a malignant scowl blackened his features. But I believed that his moodiness his harshness and his former faults of morality I say former for now he seemed corrected of them had their source in some cruel cross of fate. I believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies higher principles and purer tastes than such as circumstances had developed education instilled or destiny encouraged. I thought there were excellent materials in him though for the present they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot deny that I grieved for his grief whatever that was and would have given much to assuage it. Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed I could not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in the avenue and told how his destiny had risen up before him and dared him to be happy at Thornfield. Why not? I asked myself. What alienates him from the house? Will he leave it again soon? Mrs Fairfax said he seldom stayed here longer than a fortnight at a time and he has now been resident eight weeks. If he does go the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring summer and autumn how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem! I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing at any rate I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur peculiar and lugubrious which sounded I thought just above me. I wished I had kept my candle burning the night was drearily dark my spirits were depressed. I rose and sat up in bed listening. The sound was hushed. I tried again to sleep but my heart beat anxiously my inward tranquillity was broken. The clock far down in the hall struck two. Just then it seemed my chamber-door was touched as if fingers had swept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside. I said Who is there? Nothing answered. I was chilled with fear. All at once I remembered that it might be Pilot who when the kitchen-door chanced to be left open not unfrequently found his way up to the threshold of Mr Rochester’s chamber I had seen him lying there myself in the mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat I lay down. Silence composes the nerves and as an unbroken hush now reigned again through the whole house I began to feel the return of slumber. But it was not fated that I should sleep that night. A dream had scarcely approached my ear when it fled affrighted scared by a marrow-freezing incident enough. This was a demoniac laugh—low suppressed and deep—uttered as it seemed at the very keyhole of my chamber door. The head of my bed was near the door and I thought at first the goblin-laugher stood at my bedside—or rather crouched by my pillow but I rose looked round and could see nothing while as I still gazed the unnatural sound was reiterated and I knew it came from behind the panels. My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt my next again to cry out Who is there? Something gurgled and moaned. Ere long steps retreated up the gallery towards the third-storey staircase a door had lately been made to shut in that staircase I heard it open and close and all was still. Was that Grace Poole? and is she possessed with a devil? thought I. Impossible now to remain longer by myself I must go to Mrs Fairfax. I hurried on my frock and a shawl I withdrew the bolt and opened the door with a trembling hand. There was a candle burning just outside and on the matting in the gallery. I was surprised at this circumstance but still more was I amazed to perceive the air quite dim as if filled with smoke and while looking to the right hand and left to find whence these blue wreaths issued I became further aware of a strong smell of burning. Something creaked it was a door ajar and that door was Mr Rochester’s and the smoke rushed in a cloud from thence. I thought no more of Mrs Fairfax I thought no more of Grace Poole or the laugh in an instant I was within the chamber. Tongues of flame darted round the bed the curtains were on fire. In the midst of blaze and vapour Mr Rochester lay stretched motionless in deep sleep. Wake! wake! I cried. I shook him but he only murmured and turned the smoke had stupefied him. Not a moment could be lost the very sheets were kindling I rushed to his basin and ewer fortunately one was wide and the other deep and both were filled with water. I heaved them up deluged the bed and its occupant flew back to my own room brought my own water-jug baptized the couch afresh and by God’s aid succeeded in extinguishing the flames which were devouring it. The hiss of the quenched element the breakage of a pitcher which I flung from my hand when I had emptied it and above all the splash of the shower-bath I had liberally bestowed roused Mr Rochester at last. Though it was now dark I knew he was awake because I heard him fulminating strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of water. Is there a flood? he cried. No sir I answered but there has been a fire get up do you are quenched now I will fetch you a candle. In the name of all the elves in Christendom is that Jane Eyre? he demanded. What have you done with me witch sorceress? Who is in the room besides you? Have you plotted to drown me? I will fetch you a candle sir and in Heaven’s name get up. Somebody has plotted something you cannot too soon find out who and what it is. There! I am up now but at your peril you fetch a candle yet wait two minutes till I get into some dry garments if any dry there be—yes here is my dressing-gown. Now run! I did run I brought the candle which still remained in the gallery. He took it from my hand held it up and surveyed the bed all blackened and scorched the sheets drenched the carpet round swimming in water. What is it? and who did it? he asked. I briefly related to him what had transpired the strange laugh I had heard in the gallery the step ascending to the third storey the smoke—the smell of fire which had conducted me to his room in what state I had found matters there and how I had deluged him with all the water I could lay hands on. What is it and who did it? he asked He listened very gravely his face as I went on expressed more concern than astonishment he did not immediately speak when I had concluded. Shall I call Mrs Fairfax? I asked. Mrs Fairfax? No what the deuce would you call her for? What can she do? Let her sleep unmolested. Then I will fetch Leah and wake John and his wife. Not at all just be still. You have a shawl on. If you are not warm enough you may take my cloak yonder wrap it about you and sit down in the arm-chair there—I will put it on. Now place your feet on the stool to keep them out of the wet. I am going to leave you a few minutes. I shall take the candle. Remain where you are till I return be as still as a mouse. I must pay a visit to the second storey. Don’t move remember or call any one. He went I watched the light withdraw. He passed up the gallery very softly unclosed the staircase door with as little noise as possible shut it after him and the last ray vanished. I was left in total darkness. I listened for some noise but heard nothing. A very long time elapsed. I grew weary it was cold in spite of the cloak and then I did not see the use of staying as I was not to rouse the house. I was on the point of risking Mr Rochester’s displeasure by disobeying his orders when the light once more gleamed dimly on the gallery wall and I heard his unshod feet tread the matting. I hope it is he thought I and not something worse. He re-entered pale and very gloomy. I have found it all out said he setting his candle down on the washstand it is as I thought. How sir? He made no reply but stood with his arms folded looking on the ground. At the end of a few minutes he inquired in rather a peculiar tone— I forget whether you said you saw anything when you opened your chamber door. No sir only the candlestick on the ground. But you heard an odd laugh? You have heard that laugh before I should think or something like it? Yes sir there is a woman who sews here called Grace Poole—she laughs in that way. She is a singular person. Just so. Grace Poole—you have guessed it. She is as you say singular—very. Well I shall reflect on the subject. Meantime I am glad that you are the only person besides myself acquainted with the precise details of to-night’s incident. You are no talking fool say nothing about it. I will account for this state of affairs pointing to the bed and now return to your own room. I shall do very well on the sofa in the library for the rest of the night. It is near four—in two hours the servants will be up. Good-night then sir said I departing. He seemed surprised—very inconsistently so as he had just told me to go. What! he exclaimed are you quitting me already and in that way? You said I might go sir. But not without taking leave not without a word or two of acknowledgment and good-will not in short in that brief dry fashion. Why you have saved my life!—snatched me from a horrible and excruciating death! and you walk past me as if we were mutual strangers! At least shake hands. He held out his hand I gave him mine he took it first in one then in both his own. You have saved my life I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation but you it is different—I feel your benefits no burden Jane. He paused gazed at me words almost visible trembled on his lips—but his voice was checked. Good-night again sir. There is no debt benefit burden obligation in the case. I knew he continued you would do me good in some way at some time—I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you their expression and smile did not—again he stopped—did not he proceeded hastily strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies I have heard of good genii there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver good-night! Strange energy was in his voice strange fire in his look. I am glad I happened to be awake I said and then I was going. What! you will go? I am cold sir. Cold? Yes—and standing in a pool! Go then Jane go! But he still retained my hand and I could not free it. I bethought myself of an expedient. I think I hear Mrs Fairfax move sir said I. Well leave me he relaxed his fingers and I was gone. I regained my couch but never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore sweet as the hills of Beulah and now and then a freshening gale wakened by hope bore my spirit triumphantly towards the bourne but I could not reach it even in fancy—a counteracting breeze blew off land and continually drove me back. Sense would resist delirium judgment would warn passion. Too feverish to rest I rose as soon as day dawned. ', 'I both wished and feared to see Mr Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night I wanted to hear his voice again yet feared to meet his eye. During the early part of the morning I momentarily expected his coming he was not in the frequent habit of entering the schoolroom but he did step in for a few minutes sometimes and I had the impression that he was sure to visit it that day. But the morning passed just as usual nothing happened to interrupt the quiet course of Adèle’s studies only soon after breakfast I heard some bustle in the neighbourhood of Mr Rochester’s chamber Mrs Fairfax’s voice and Leah’s and the cook’s—that is John’s wife—and even John’s own gruff tones. There were exclamations of What a mercy master was not burnt in his bed! It is always dangerous to keep a candle lit at night. How providential that he had presence of mind to think of the water-jug! I wonder he waked nobody! It is to be hoped he will not take cold with sleeping on the library sofa &c. To much confabulation succeeded a sound of scrubbing and setting to rights and when I passed the room in going downstairs to dinner I saw through the open door that all was again restored to complete order only the bed was stripped of its hangings. Leah stood up in the window-seat rubbing the panes of glass dimmed with smoke. I was about to address her for I wished to know what account had been given of the affair but on advancing I saw a second person in the chamber—a woman sitting on a chair by the bedside and sewing rings to new curtains. That woman was no other than Grace Poole. There she sat staid and taciturn-looking as usual in her brown stuff gown her check apron white handkerchief and cap. She was intent on her work in which her whole thoughts seemed absorbed on her hard forehead and in her commonplace features was nothing either of the paleness or desperation one would have expected to see marking the countenance of a woman who had attempted murder and whose intended victim had followed her last night to her lair and as I believed charged her with the crime she wished to perpetrate. I was amazed—confounded. She looked up while I still gazed at her no start no increase or failure of colour betrayed emotion consciousness of guilt or fear of detection. She said Good morning Miss in her usual phlegmatic and brief manner and taking up another ring and more tape went on with her sewing. I will put her to some test thought I such absolute impenetrability is past comprehension. Good morning Grace I said. Has anything happened here? I thought I heard the servants all talking together a while ago. Only master had been reading in his bed last night he fell asleep with his candle lit and the curtains got on fire but fortunately he awoke before the bed-clothes or the wood-work caught and contrived to quench the flames with the water in the ewer. A strange affair! I said in a low voice then looking at her fixedly—Did Mr Rochester wake nobody? Did no one hear him move? She again raised her eyes to me and this time there was something of consciousness in their expression. She seemed to examine me warily then she answered— The servants sleep so far off you know Miss they would not be likely to hear. Mrs Fairfax’s room and yours are the nearest to master’s but Mrs Fairfax said she heard nothing when people get elderly they often sleep heavy. She paused and then added with a sort of assumed indifference but still in a marked and significant tone—But you are young Miss and I should say a light sleeper perhaps you may have heard a noise? I did said I dropping my voice so that Leah who was still polishing the panes could not hear me and at first I thought it was Pilot but Pilot cannot laugh and I am certain I heard a laugh and a strange one. She took a new needleful of thread waxed it carefully threaded her needle with a steady hand and then observed with perfect composure— It is hardly likely master would laugh I should think Miss when he was in such danger You must have been dreaming. I was not dreaming I said with some warmth for her brazen coolness provoked me. Again she looked at me and with the same scrutinising and conscious eye. Have you told master that you heard a laugh? she inquired. I have not had the opportunity of speaking to him this morning. You did not think of opening your door and looking out into the gallery? she further asked. She appeared to be cross-questioning me attempting to draw from me information unawares. The idea struck me that if she discovered I knew or suspected her guilt she would be playing of some of her malignant pranks on me I thought it advisable to be on my guard. On the contrary said I I bolted my door. Then you are not in the habit of bolting your door every night before you get into bed? Fiend! she wants to know my habits that she may lay her plans accordingly! Indignation again prevailed over prudence I replied sharply Hitherto I have often omitted to fasten the bolt I did not think it necessary. I was not aware any danger or annoyance was to be dreaded at Thornfield Hall but in future and I laid marked stress on the words I shall take good care to make all secure before I venture to lie down. It will be wise so to do was her answer this neighbourhood is as quiet as any I know and I never heard of the hall being attempted by robbers since it was a house though there are hundreds of pounds’ worth of plate in the plate-closet as is well known. And you see for such a large house there are very few servants because master has never lived here much and when he does come being a bachelor he needs little waiting on but I always think it best to err on the safe side a door is soon fastened and it is as well to have a drawn bolt between one and any mischief that may be about. A deal of people Miss are for trusting all to Providence but I say Providence will not dispense with the means though He often blesses them when they are used discreetly. And here she closed her harangue a long one for her and uttered with the demureness of a Quakeress. I still stood absolutely dumfoundered at what appeared to me her miraculous self-possession and most inscrutable hypocrisy when the cook entered. Mrs Poole said she addressing Grace the servants’ dinner will soon be ready will you come down? No just put my pint of porter and bit of pudding on a tray and I’ll carry it upstairs. You’ll have some meat? Just a morsel and a taste of cheese that’s all. And the sago? Never mind it at present I shall be coming down before teatime I’ll make it myself. The cook here turned to me saying that Mrs Fairfax was waiting for me so I departed. I hardly heard Mrs Fairfax’s account of the curtain conflagration during dinner so much was I occupied in puzzling my brains over the enigmatical character of Grace Poole and still more in pondering the problem of her position at Thornfield and questioning why she had not been given into custody that morning or at the very least dismissed from her master’s service. He had almost as much as declared his conviction of her criminality last night what mysterious cause withheld him from accusing her? Why had he enjoined me too to secrecy? It was strange a bold vindictive and haughty gentleman seemed somehow in the power of one of the meanest of his dependents so much in her power that even when she lifted her hand against his life he dared not openly charge her with the attempt much less punish her for it. Had Grace been young and handsome I should have been tempted to think that tenderer feelings than prudence or fear influenced Mr Rochester in her behalf but hard-favoured and matronly as she was the idea could not be admitted. Yet I reflected she has been young once her youth would be contemporary with her master’s Mrs Fairfax told me once she had lived here many years. I don’t think she can ever have been pretty but for aught I know she may possess originality and strength of character to compensate for the want of personal advantages. Mr Rochester is an amateur of the decided and eccentric Grace is eccentric at least. What if a former caprice a freak very possible to a nature so sudden and headstrong as his has delivered him into her power and she now exercises over his actions a secret influence the result of his own indiscretion which he cannot shake off and dare not disregard? But having reached this point of conjecture Mrs Poole’s square flat figure and uncomely dry even coarse face recurred so distinctly to my mind’s eye that I thought No impossible! my supposition cannot be correct. Yet suggested the secret voice which talks to us in our own hearts you are not beautiful either and perhaps Mr Rochester approves you at any rate you have often felt as if he did and last night—remember his words remember his look remember his voice! I well remembered all language glance and tone seemed at the moment vividly renewed. I was now in the schoolroom Adèle was drawing I bent over her and directed her pencil. She looked up with a sort of start. Qu’avez-vous mademoiselle? said she. Vos doigts tremblent comme la feuille et vos joues sont rouges mais rouges comme des cerises! I am hot Adèle with stooping! She went on sketching I went on thinking. I hastened to drive from my mind the hateful notion I had been conceiving respecting Grace Poole it disgusted me. I compared myself with her and found we were different. Bessie Leaven had said I was quite a lady and she spoke truth—I was a lady. And now I looked much better than I did when Bessie saw me I had more colour and more flesh more life more vivacity because I had brighter hopes and keener enjoyments. Evening approaches said I as I looked towards the window. I have never heard Mr Rochester’s voice or step in the house to-day but surely I shall see him before night I feared the meeting in the morning now I desire it because expectation has been so long baffled that it is grown impatient. When dusk actually closed and when Adèle left me to go and play in the nursery with Sophie I did most keenly desire it. I listened for the bell to ring below I listened for Leah coming up with a message I fancied sometimes I heard Mr Rochester’s own tread and I turned to the door expecting it to open and admit him. The door remained shut darkness only came in through the window. Still it was not late he often sent for me at seven and eight o’clock and it was yet but six. Surely I should not be wholly disappointed to-night when I had so many things to say to him! I wanted again to introduce the subject of Grace Poole and to hear what he would answer I wanted to ask him plainly if he really believed it was she who had made last night’s hideous attempt and if so why he kept her wickedness a secret. It little mattered whether my curiosity irritated him I knew the pleasure of vexing and soothing him by turns it was one I chiefly delighted in and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far beyond the verge of provocation I never ventured on the extreme brink I liked well to try my skill. Retaining every minute form of respect every propriety of my station I could still meet him in argument without fear or uneasy restraint this suited both him and me. A tread creaked on the stairs at last. Leah made her appearance but it was only to intimate that tea was ready in Mrs Fairfax’s room. Thither I repaired glad at least to go downstairs for that brought me I imagined nearer to Mr Rochester’s presence. You must want your tea said the good lady as I joined her you ate so little at dinner. I am afraid she continued you are not well to-day you look flushed and feverish. Oh quite well! I never felt better. Then you must prove it by evincing a good appetite will you fill the teapot while I knit off this needle? Having completed her task she rose to draw down the blind which she had hitherto kept up by way I suppose of making the most of daylight though dusk was now fast deepening into total obscurity. It is fair to-night said she as she looked through the panes though not starlight Mr Rochester has on the whole had a favourable day for his journey. Journey!—Is Mr Rochester gone anywhere? I did not know he was out. Oh he set off the moment he had breakfasted! He is gone to the Leas Mr Eshton’s place ten miles on the other side Millcote. I believe there is quite a party assembled there Lord Ingram Sir George Lynn Colonel Dent and others. Do you expect him back to-night? No—nor to-morrow either I should think he is very likely to stay a week or more when these fine fashionable people get together they are so surrounded by elegance and gaiety so well provided with all that can please and entertain they are in no hurry to separate. Gentlemen especially are often in request on such occasions and Mr Rochester is so talented and so lively in society that I believe he is a general favourite the ladies are very fond of him though you would not think his appearance calculated to recommend him particularly in their eyes but I suppose his acquirements and abilities perhaps his wealth and good blood make amends for any little fault of look. Are there ladies at the Leas? There are Mrs Eshton and her three daughters—very elegant young ladies indeed and there are the Honourable Blanche and Mary Ingram most beautiful women I suppose indeed I have seen Blanche six or seven years since when she was a girl of eighteen. She came here to a Christmas ball and party Mr Rochester gave. You should have seen the dining-room that day—how richly it was decorated how brilliantly lit up! I should think there were fifty ladies and gentlemen present—all of the first county families and Miss Ingram was considered the belle of the evening. You saw her you say Mrs Fairfax what was she like? Yes I saw her. The dining-room doors were thrown open and as it was Christmas-time the servants were allowed to assemble in the hall to hear some of the ladies sing and play. Mr Rochester would have me to come in and I sat down in a quiet corner and watched them. I never saw a more splendid scene the ladies were magnificently dressed most of them—at least most of the younger ones—looked handsome but Miss Ingram was certainly the queen. And what was she like? Tall fine bust sloping shoulders long graceful neck olive complexion dark and clear noble features eyes rather like Mr Rochester’s large and black and as brilliant as her jewels. And then she had such a fine head of hair raven-black and so becomingly arranged a crown of thick plaits behind and in front the longest the glossiest curls I ever saw. She was dressed in pure white an amber-coloured scarf was passed over her shoulder and across her breast tied at the side and descending in long fringed ends below her knee. She wore an amber-coloured flower too in her hair it contrasted well with the jetty mass of her curls. She was greatly admired of course? Yes indeed and not only for her beauty but for her accomplishments. She was one of the ladies who sang a gentleman accompanied her on the piano. She and Mr Rochester sang a duet. Mr Rochester? I was not aware he could sing. Oh! he has a fine bass voice and an excellent taste for music. And Miss Ingram what sort of a voice had she? A very rich and powerful one she sang delightfully it was a treat to listen to her—and she played afterwards. I am no judge of music but Mr Rochester is and I heard him say her execution was remarkably good. And this beautiful and accomplished lady she is not yet married? It appears not I fancy neither she nor her sister have very large fortunes. Old Lord Ingram’s estates were chiefly entailed and the eldest son came in for everything almost. But I wonder no wealthy nobleman or gentleman has taken a fancy to her Mr Rochester for instance. He is rich is he not? Oh! yes. But you see there is a considerable difference in age Mr Rochester is nearly forty she is but twenty-five. What of that? More unequal matches are made every day. True yet I should scarcely fancy Mr Rochester would entertain an idea of the sort. But you eat nothing you have scarcely tasted since you began tea. No I am too thirsty to eat. Will you let me have another cup? I was about again to revert to the probability of a union between Mr Rochester and the beautiful Blanche but Adèle came in and the conversation was turned into another channel. When once more alone I reviewed the information I had got looked into my heart examined its thoughts and feelings and endeavoured to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination’s boundless and trackless waste into the safe fold of common sense. Arraigned at my own bar Memory having given her evidence of the hopes wishes sentiments I had been cherishing since last night—of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past Reason having come forward and told in her own quiet way a plain unvarnished tale showing how I had rejected the real and rabidly devoured the ideal—I pronounced judgment to this effect— That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies and swallowed poison as if it were nectar. You I said a favourite with Mr Rochester? You gifted with the power of pleasing him? You of importance to him in any way? Go! your folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference—equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice. How dared you? Poor stupid dupe!—Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night?—Cover your face and be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes did he? Blind puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness! It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior who cannot possibly intend to marry her and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them which if unreturned and unknown must devour the life that feeds it and if discovered and responded to must lead ignis-fatuus-like into miry wilds whence there is no extrication. Listen then Jane Eyre to your sentence to-morrow place the glass before you and draw in chalk your own picture faithfully without softening one defect omit no harsh line smooth away no displeasing irregularity write under it ‘Portrait of a Governess disconnected poor and plain.’ Afterwards take a piece of smooth ivory—you have one prepared in your drawing-box take your palette mix your freshest finest clearest tints choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils delineate carefully the loveliest face you can imagine paint it in your softest shades and sweetest lines according to the description given by Mrs Fairfax of Blanche Ingram remember the raven ringlets the oriental eye—What! you revert to Mr Rochester as a model! Order! No snivel!—no sentiment!—no regret! I will endure only sense and resolution. Recall the august yet harmonious lineaments the Grecian neck and bust let the round and dazzling arm be visible and the delicate hand omit neither diamond ring nor gold bracelet portray faithfully the attire aërial lace and glistening satin graceful scarf and golden rose call it ‘Blanche an accomplished lady of rank.’ Whenever in future you should chance to fancy Mr Rochester thinks well of you take out these two pictures and compare them say ‘Mr Rochester might probably win that noble lady’s love if he chose to strive for it is it likely he would waste a serious thought on this indigent and insignificant plebeian?’ I’ll do it I resolved and having framed this determination I grew calm and fell asleep. I kept my word. An hour or two sufficed to sketch my own portrait in crayons and in less than a fortnight I had completed an ivory miniature of an imaginary Blanche Ingram. It looked a lovely face enough and when compared with the real head in chalk the contrast was as great as self-control could desire. I derived benefit from the task it had kept my head and hands employed and had given force and fixedness to the new impressions I wished to stamp indelibly on my heart. Ere long I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of wholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit. Thanks to it I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent calm which had they found me unprepared I should probably have been unequal to maintain even externally. ', 'A week passed and no news arrived of Mr Rochester ten days and still he did not come. Mrs Fairfax said she should not be surprised if he were to go straight from the Leas to London and thence to the Continent and not show his face again at Thornfield for a year to come he had not unfrequently quitted it in a manner quite as abrupt and unexpected. When I heard this I was beginning to feel a strange chill and failing at the heart. I was actually permitting myself to experience a sickening sense of disappointment but rallying my wits and recollecting my principles I at once called my sensations to order and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder—how I cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr Rochester’s movements a matter in which I had any cause to take a vital interest. Not that I humbled myself by a slavish notion of inferiority on the contrary I just said— You have nothing to do with the master of Thornfield further than to receive the salary he gives you for teaching his protégée and to be grateful for such respectful and kind treatment as if you do your duty you have a right to expect at his hands. Be sure that is the only tie he seriously acknowledges between you and him so don’t make him the object of your fine feelings your raptures agonies and so forth. He is not of your order keep to your caste and be too self-respecting to lavish the love of the whole heart soul and strength where such a gift is not wanted and would be despised. I went on with my day’s business tranquilly but ever and anon vague suggestions kept wandering across my brain of reasons why I should quit Thornfield and I kept involuntarily framing advertisements and pondering conjectures about new situations these thoughts I did not think to check they might germinate and bear fruit if they could. Mr Rochester had been absent upwards of a fortnight when the post brought Mrs Fairfax a letter. It is from the master said she as she looked at the direction. Now I suppose we shall know whether we are to expect his return or not. And while she broke the seal and perused the document I went on taking my coffee we were at breakfast it was hot and I attributed to that circumstance a fiery glow which suddenly rose to my face. Why my hand shook and why I involuntarily spilt half the contents of my cup into my saucer I did not choose to consider. Well I sometimes think we are too quiet but we run a chance of being busy enough now for a little while at least said Mrs Fairfax still holding the note before her spectacles. Ere I permitted myself to request an explanation I tied the string of Adèle’s pinafore which happened to be loose having helped her also to another bun and refilled her mug with milk I said nonchalantly— Mr Rochester is not likely to return soon I suppose? Indeed he is—in three days he says that will be next Thursday and not alone either. I don’t know how many of the fine people at the Leas are coming with him he sends directions for all the best bedrooms to be prepared and the library and drawing-rooms are to be cleaned out I am to get more kitchen hands from the George Inn at Millcote and from wherever else I can and the ladies will bring their maids and the gentlemen their valets so we shall have a full house of it. And Mrs Fairfax swallowed her breakfast and hastened away to commence operations. The three days were as she had foretold busy enough. I had thought all the rooms at Thornfield beautifully clean and well arranged but it appears I was mistaken. Three women were got to help and such scrubbing such brushing such washing of paint and beating of carpets such taking down and putting up of pictures such polishing of mirrors and lustres such lighting of fires in bedrooms such airing of sheets and feather-beds on hearths I never beheld either before or since. Adèle ran quite wild in the midst of it the preparations for company and the prospect of their arrival seemed to throw her into ecstasies. She would have Sophie to look over all her toilettes as she called frocks to furbish up any that were passées and to air and arrange the new. For herself she did nothing but caper about in the front chambers jump on and off the bedsteads and lie on the mattresses and piled-up bolsters and pillows before the enormous fires roaring in the chimneys. From school duties she was exonerated Mrs Fairfax had pressed me into her service and I was all day in the storeroom helping or hindering her and the cook learning to make custards and cheese-cakes and French pastry to truss game and garnish desert-dishes. The party were expected to arrive on Thursday afternoon in time for dinner at six. During the intervening period I had no time to nurse chimeras and I believe I was as active and gay as anybody—Adèle excepted. Still now and then I received a damping check to my cheerfulness and was in spite of myself thrown back on the region of doubts and portents and dark conjectures. This was when I chanced to see the third-storey staircase door which of late had always been kept locked open slowly and give passage to the form of Grace Poole in prim cap white apron and handkerchief when I watched her glide along the gallery her quiet tread muffled in a list slipper when I saw her look into the bustling topsy-turvy bedrooms—just say a word perhaps to the charwoman about the proper way to polish a grate or clean a marble mantelpiece or take stains from papered walls and then pass on. She would thus descend to the kitchen once a day eat her dinner smoke a moderate pipe on the hearth and go back carrying her pot of porter with her for her private solace in her own gloomy upper haunt. Only one hour in the twenty-four did she pass with her fellow-servants below all the rest of her time was spent in some low-ceiled oaken chamber of the second storey there she sat and sewed—and probably laughed drearily to herself—as companionless as a prisoner in his dungeon. The strangest thing of all was that not a soul in the house except me noticed her habits or seemed to marvel at them no one discussed her position or employment no one pitied her solitude or isolation. I once indeed overheard part of a dialogue between Leah and one of the charwomen of which Grace formed the subject. Leah had been saying something I had not caught and the charwoman remarked— She gets good wages I guess? Yes said Leah I wish I had as good not that mine are to complain of—there’s no stinginess at Thornfield but they’re not one fifth of the sum Mrs Poole receives. And she is laying by she goes every quarter to the bank at Millcote. I should not wonder but she has saved enough to keep her independent if she liked to leave but I suppose she’s got used to the place and then she’s not forty yet and strong and able for anything. It is too soon for her to give up business. She is a good hand I daresay said the charwoman. Ah!—she understands what she has to do—nobody better rejoined Leah significantly and it is not every one could fill her shoes—not for all the money she gets. That it is not! was the reply. I wonder whether the master— The charwoman was going on but here Leah turned and perceived me and she instantly gave her companion a nudge. Doesn’t she know? I heard the woman whisper. Leah shook her head and the conversation was of course dropped. All I had gathered from it amounted to this—that there was a mystery at Thornfield and that from participation in that mystery I was purposely excluded. Thursday came all work had been completed the previous evening carpets were laid down bed-hangings festooned radiant white counterpanes spread toilet tables arranged furniture rubbed flowers piled in vases both chambers and saloons looked as fresh and bright as hands could make them. The hall too was scoured and the great carved clock as well as the steps and banisters of the staircase were polished to the brightness of glass in the dining-room the sideboard flashed resplendent with plate in the drawing-room and boudoir vases of exotics bloomed on all sides. Afternoon arrived Mrs Fairfax assumed her best black satin gown her gloves and her gold watch for it was her part to receive the company—to conduct the ladies to their rooms &c. Adèle too would be dressed though I thought she had little chance of being introduced to the party that day at least. However to please her I allowed Sophie to apparel her in one of her short full muslin frocks. For myself I had no need to make any change I should not be called upon to quit my sanctum of the schoolroom for a sanctum it was now become to me—a very pleasant refuge in time of trouble. It had been a mild serene spring day—one of those days which towards the end of March or the beginning of April rise shining over the earth as heralds of summer. It was drawing to an end now but the evening was even warm and I sat at work in the schoolroom with the window open. It gets late said Mrs Fairfax entering in rustling state. I am glad I ordered dinner an hour after the time Mr Rochester mentioned for it is past six now. I have sent John down to the gates to see if there is anything on the road one can see a long way from thence in the direction of Millcote. She went to the window. Here he is! said she. Well John leaning out any news? They’re coming ma’am was the answer. They’ll be here in ten minutes. Adèle flew to the window. I followed taking care to stand on one side so that screened by the curtain I could see without being seen. The ten minutes John had given seemed very long but at last wheels were heard four equestrians galloped up the drive and after them came two open carriages. Fluttering veils and waving plumes filled the vehicles two of the cavaliers were young dashing-looking gentlemen the third was Mr Rochester on his black horse Mesrour Pilot bounding before him at his side rode a lady and he and she were the first of the party. Her purple riding-habit almost swept the ground her veil streamed long on the breeze mingling with its transparent folds and gleaming through them shone rich raven ringlets. Miss Ingram! exclaimed Mrs Fairfax and away she hurried to her post below. The cavalcade following the sweep of the drive quickly turned the angle of the house and I lost sight of it. Adèle now petitioned to go down but I took her on my knee and gave her to understand that she must not on any account think of venturing in sight of the ladies either now or at any other time unless expressly sent for that Mr Rochester would be very angry &c. Some natural tears she shed on being told this but as I began to look very grave she consented at last to wipe them. A joyous stir was now audible in the hall gentlemen’s deep tones and ladies’ silvery accents blent harmoniously together and distinguishable above all though not loud was the sonorous voice of the master of Thornfield Hall welcoming his fair and gallant guests under its roof. Then light steps ascended the stairs and there was a tripping through the gallery and soft cheerful laughs and opening and closing doors and for a time a hush. Elles changent de toilettes said Adèle who listening attentively had followed every movement and she sighed. Chez maman said she quand il y avait du monde je le suivais partout au salon et à leurs chambres souvent je regardais les femmes de chambre coiffer et habiller les dames et c’était si amusant comme cela on apprend. Don’t you feel hungry Adèle? Mais oui mademoiselle voilà cinq ou six heures que nous n’avons pas mangé. Well now while the ladies are in their rooms I will venture down and get you something to eat. And issuing from my asylum with precaution I sought a back-stairs which conducted directly to the kitchen. All in that region was fire and commotion the soup and fish were in the last stage of projection and the cook hung over her crucibles in a frame of mind and body threatening spontaneous combustion. In the servants’ hall two coachmen and three gentlemen’s gentlemen stood or sat round the fire the abigails I suppose were upstairs with their mistresses the new servants that had been hired from Millcote were bustling about everywhere. Threading this chaos I at last reached the larder there I took possession of a cold chicken a roll of bread some tarts a plate or two and a knife and fork with this booty I made a hasty retreat. I had regained the gallery and was just shutting the back-door behind me when an accelerated hum warned me that the ladies were about to issue from their chambers. I could not proceed to the schoolroom without passing some of their doors and running the risk of being surprised with my cargo of victualage so I stood still at this end which being windowless was dark quite dark now for the sun was set and twilight gathering. Presently the chambers gave up their fair tenants one after another each came out gaily and airily with dress that gleamed lustrous through the dusk. For a moment they stood grouped together at the other extremity of the gallery conversing in a key of sweet subdued vivacity they then descended the staircase almost as noiselessly as a bright mist rolls down a hill. Their collective appearance had left on me an impression of high-born elegance such as I had never before received. I found Adèle peeping through the schoolroom door which she held ajar. What beautiful ladies! cried she in English. Oh I wish I might go to them! Do you think Mr Rochester will send for us by-and-by after dinner? No indeed I don’t Mr Rochester has something else to think about. Never mind the ladies to-night perhaps you will see them to-morrow here is your dinner. She was really hungry so the chicken and tarts served to divert her attention for a time. It was well I secured this forage or both she I and Sophie to whom I conveyed a share of our repast would have run a chance of getting no dinner at all every one downstairs was too much engaged to think of us. The dessert was not carried out till after nine and at ten footmen were still running to and fro with trays and coffee-cups. I allowed Adèle to sit up much later than usual for she declared she could not possibly go to sleep while the doors kept opening and shutting below and people bustling about. Besides she added a message might possibly come from Mr Rochester when she was undressed et alors quel dommage! I told her stories as long as she would listen to them and then for a change I took her out into the gallery. The hall lamp was now lit and it amused her to look over the balustrade and watch the servants passing backwards and forwards. When the evening was far advanced a sound of music issued from the drawing-room whither the piano had been removed Adèle and I sat down on the top step of the stairs to listen. Presently a voice blent with the rich tones of the instrument it was a lady who sang and very sweet her notes were. The solo over a duet followed and then a glee a joyous conversational murmur filled up the intervals. I listened long suddenly I discovered that my ear was wholly intent on analysing the mingled sounds and trying to discriminate amidst the confusion of accents those of Mr Rochester and when it caught them which it soon did it found a further task in framing the tones rendered by distance inarticulate into words. The clock struck eleven. I looked at Adèle whose head leant against my shoulder her eyes were waxing heavy so I took her up in my arms and carried her off to bed. It was near one before the gentlemen and ladies sought their chambers. The next day was as fine as its predecessor it was devoted by the party to an excursion to some site in the neighbourhood. They set out early in the forenoon some on horseback the rest in carriages I witnessed both the departure and the return. Miss Ingram as before was the only lady equestrian and as before Mr Rochester galloped at her side the two rode a little apart from the rest. I pointed out this circumstance to Mrs Fairfax who was standing at the window with me— You said it was not likely they should think of being married said I but you see Mr Rochester evidently prefers her to any of the other ladies. Yes I daresay no doubt he admires her. And she him I added look how she leans her head towards him as if she were conversing confidentially I wish I could see her face I have never had a glimpse of it yet. You will see her this evening answered Mrs Fairfax. I happened to remark to Mr Rochester how much Adèle wished to be introduced to the ladies and he said ‘Oh! let her come into the drawing-room after dinner and request Miss Eyre to accompany her.’ Yes he said that from mere politeness I need not go I am sure I answered. Well I observed to him that as you were unused to company I did not think you would like appearing before so gay a party—all strangers and he replied in his quick way—‘Nonsense! If she objects tell her it is my particular wish and if she resists say I shall come and fetch her in case of contumacy.’ I will not give him that trouble I answered. I will go if no better may be but I don’t like it. Shall you be there Mrs Fairfax? No I pleaded off and he admitted my plea. I’ll tell you how to manage so as to avoid the embarrassment of making a formal entrance which is the most disagreeable part of the business. You must go into the drawing-room while it is empty before the ladies leave the dinner-table choose your seat in any quiet nook you like you need not stay long after the gentlemen come in unless you please just let Mr Rochester see you are there and then slip away—nobody will notice you. Will these people remain long do you think? Perhaps two or three weeks certainly not more. After the Easter recess Sir George Lynn who was lately elected member for Millcote will have to go up to town and take his seat I daresay Mr Rochester will accompany him it surprises me that he has already made so protracted a stay at Thornfield. It was with some trepidation that I perceived the hour approach when I was to repair with my charge to the drawing-room. Adèle had been in a state of ecstasy all day after hearing she was to be presented to the ladies in the evening and it was not till Sophie commenced the operation of dressing her that she sobered down. Then the importance of the process quickly steadied her and by the time she had her curls arranged in well-smoothed drooping clusters her pink satin frock put on her long sash tied and her lace mittens adjusted she looked as grave as any judge. No need to warn her not to disarrange her attire when she was dressed she sat demurely down in her little chair taking care previously to lift up the satin skirt for fear she should crease it and assured me she would not stir thence till I was ready. This I quickly was my best dress the silver-grey one purchased for Miss Temple’s wedding and never worn since was soon put on my hair was soon smoothed my sole ornament the pearl brooch soon assumed. We descended. Fortunately there was another entrance to the drawing-room than that through the saloon where they were all seated at dinner. We found the apartment vacant a large fire burning silently on the marble hearth and wax candles shining in bright solitude amid the exquisite flowers with which the tables were adorned. The crimson curtain hung before the arch slight as was the separation this drapery formed from the party in the adjoining saloon they spoke in so low a key that nothing of their conversation could be distinguished beyond a soothing murmur. Adèle who appeared to be still under the influence of a most solemnising impression sat down without a word on the footstool I pointed out to her. I retired to a window-seat and taking a book from a table near endeavoured to read. Adèle brought her stool to my feet ere long she touched my knee. What is it Adèle? Est-ce que je ne puis pas prendre une seule de ces fleurs magnifiques mademoiselle? Seulement pour completer ma toilette. You think too much of your ‘toilette’ Adèle but you may have a flower. And I took a rose from a vase and fastened it in her sash. She sighed a sigh of ineffable satisfaction as if her cup of happiness were now full. I turned my face away to conceal a smile I could not suppress there was something ludicrous as well as painful in the little Parisienne’s earnest and innate devotion to matters of dress. A soft sound of rising now became audible the curtain was swept back from the arch through it appeared the dining-room with its lit lustre pouring down light on the silver and glass of a magnificent dessert-service covering a long table a band of ladies stood in the opening they entered and the curtain fell behind them. There were but eight yet somehow as they flocked in they gave the impression of a much larger number. Some of them were very tall many were dressed in white and all had a sweeping amplitude of array that seemed to magnify their persons as a mist magnifies the moon. I rose and curtseyed to them one or two bent their heads in return the others only stared at me. They dispersed about the room reminding me by the lightness and buoyancy of their movements of a flock of white plumy birds. Some of them threw themselves in half-reclining positions on the sofas and ottomans some bent over the tables and examined the flowers and books the rest gathered in a group round the fire all talked in a low but clear tone which seemed habitual to them. I knew their names afterwards and may as well mention them now. First there was Mrs Eshton and two of her daughters. She had evidently been a handsome woman and was well preserved still. Of her daughters the eldest Amy was rather little naïve and child-like in face and manner and piquant in form her white muslin dress and blue sash became her well. The second Louisa was taller and more elegant in figure with a very pretty face of that order the French term minois chiffoné both sisters were fair as lilies. Lady Lynn was a large and stout personage of about forty very erect very haughty-looking richly dressed in a satin robe of changeful sheen her dark hair shone glossily under the shade of an azure plume and within the circlet of a band of gems. Mrs Colonel Dent was less showy but I thought more lady-like. She had a slight figure a pale gentle face and fair hair. Her black satin dress her scarf of rich foreign lace and her pearl ornaments pleased me better than the rainbow radiance of the titled dame. But the three most distinguished—partly perhaps because the tallest figures of the band—were the Dowager Lady Ingram and her daughters Blanche and Mary. They were all three of the loftiest stature of women. The Dowager might be between forty and fifty her shape was still fine her hair by candle-light at least still black her teeth too were still apparently perfect. Most people would have termed her a splendid woman of her age and so she was no doubt physically speaking but then there was an expression of almost insupportable haughtiness in her bearing and countenance. She had Roman features and a double chin disappearing into a throat like a pillar these features appeared to me not only inflated and darkened but even furrowed with pride and the chin was sustained by the same principle in a position of almost preternatural erectness. She had likewise a fierce and a hard eye it reminded me of Mrs Reed’s she mouthed her words in speaking her voice was deep its inflections very pompous very dogmatical—very intolerable in short. A crimson velvet robe and a shawl turban of some gold-wrought Indian fabric invested her I suppose she thought with a truly imperial dignity. Blanche and Mary were of equal stature—straight and tall as poplars. Mary was too slim for her height but Blanche was moulded like a Dian. I regarded her of course with special interest. First I wished to see whether her appearance accorded with Mrs Fairfax’s description secondly whether it at all resembled the fancy miniature I had painted of her and thirdly—it will out!—whether it were such as I should fancy likely to suit Mr Rochester’s taste. As far as person went she answered point for point both to my picture and Mrs Fairfax’s description. The noble bust the sloping shoulders the graceful neck the dark eyes and black ringlets were all there—but her face? Her face was like her mother’s a youthful unfurrowed likeness the same low brow the same high features the same pride. It was not however so saturnine a pride! she laughed continually her laugh was satirical and so was the habitual expression of her arched and haughty lip. Genius is said to be self-conscious. I cannot tell whether Miss Ingram was a genius but she was self-conscious—remarkably self-conscious indeed. She entered into a discourse on botany with the gentle Mrs Dent. It seemed Mrs Dent had not studied that science though as she said she liked flowers especially wild ones Miss Ingram had and she ran over its vocabulary with an air. I presently perceived she was what is vernacularly termed trailing Mrs Dent that is playing on her ignorance her trail might be clever but it was decidedly not good-natured. She played her execution was brilliant she sang her voice was fine she talked French apart to her mamma and she talked it well with fluency and with a good accent. Mary had a milder and more open countenance than Blanche softer features too and a skin some shades fairer Miss Ingram was dark as a Spaniard—but Mary was deficient in life her face lacked expression her eye lustre she had nothing to say and having once taken her seat remained fixed like a statue in its niche. The sisters were both attired in spotless white. And did I now think Miss Ingram such a choice as Mr Rochester would be likely to make? I could not tell—I did not know his taste in female beauty. If he liked the majestic she was the very type of majesty then she was accomplished sprightly. Most gentlemen would admire her I thought and that he did admire her I already seemed to have obtained proof to remove the last shade of doubt it remained but to see them together. You are not to suppose reader that Adèle has all this time been sitting motionless on the stool at my feet no when the ladies entered she rose advanced to meet them made a stately reverence and said with gravity— Bon jour mesdames. And Miss Ingram had looked down at her with a mocking air and exclaimed Oh what a little puppet! Lady Lynn had remarked It is Mr Rochester’s ward I suppose—the little French girl he was speaking of. Mrs Dent had kindly taken her hand and given her a kiss. Amy and Louisa Eshton had cried out simultaneously— What a love of a child! And then they had called her to a sofa where she now sat ensconced between them chattering alternately in French and broken English absorbing not only the young ladies’ attention but that of Mrs Eshton and Lady Lynn and getting spoilt to her heart’s content. At last coffee is brought in and the gentlemen are summoned. I sit in the shade—if any shade there be in this brilliantly-lit apartment the window-curtain half hides me. Again the arch yawns they come. The collective appearance of the gentlemen like that of the ladies is very imposing they are all costumed in black most of them are tall some young. Henry and Frederick Lynn are very dashing sparks indeed and Colonel Dent is a fine soldierly man. Mr Eshton the magistrate of the district is gentleman-like his hair is quite white his eyebrows and whiskers still dark which gives him something of the appearance of a père noble de théâtre. Lord Ingram like his sisters is very tall like them also he is handsome but he shares Mary’s apathetic and listless look he seems to have more length of limb than vivacity of blood or vigour of brain. And where is Mr Rochester? He comes in last I am not looking at the arch yet I see him enter. I try to concentrate my attention on those netting-needles on the meshes of the purse I am forming—I wish to think only of the work I have in my hands to see only the silver beads and silk threads that lie in my lap whereas I distinctly behold his figure and I inevitably recall the moment when I last saw it just after I had rendered him what he deemed an essential service and he holding my hand and looking down on my face surveyed me with eyes that revealed a heart full and eager to overflow in whose emotions I had a part. How near had I approached him at that moment! What had occurred since calculated to change his and my relative positions? Yet now how distant how far estranged we were! So far estranged that I did not expect him to come and speak to me. I did not wonder when without looking at me he took a seat at the other side of the room and began conversing with some of the ladies. No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them and that I might gaze without being observed than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face I could not keep their lids under control they would rise and the irids would fix on him. I looked and had an acute pleasure in looking—a precious yet poignant pleasure pure gold with a steely point of agony a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless. Most true is it that beauty is in the eye of the gazer. My master’s colourless olive face square massive brow broad and jetty eyebrows deep eyes strong features firm grim mouth—all energy decision will—were not beautiful according to rule but they were more than beautiful to me they were full of an interest an influence that quite mastered me—that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected and now at the first renewed view of him they spontaneously arrived green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me. I compared him with his guests. What was the gallant grace of the Lynns the languid elegance of Lord Ingram—even the military distinction of Colonel Dent contrasted with his look of native pith and genuine power? I had no sympathy in their appearance their expression yet I could imagine that most observers would call them attractive handsome imposing while they would pronounce Mr Rochester at once harsh-featured and melancholy-looking. I saw them smile laugh—it was nothing the light of the candles had as much soul in it as their smile the tinkle of the bell as much significance as their laugh. I saw Mr Rochester smile—his stern features softened his eye grew both brilliant and gentle its ray both searching and sweet. He was talking at the moment to Louisa and Amy Eshton. I wondered to see them receive with calm that look which seemed to me so penetrating I expected their eyes to fall their colour to rise under it yet I was glad when I found they were in no sense moved. He is not to them what he is to me I thought he is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine—I am sure he is—I feel akin to him—I understand the language of his countenance and movements though rank and wealth sever us widely I have something in my brain and heart in my blood and nerves that assimilates me mentally to him. Did I say a few days since that I had nothing to do with him but to receive my salary at his hands? Did I forbid myself to think of him in any other light than as a paymaster? Blasphemy against nature! Every good true vigorous feeling I have gathers impulsively round him. I know I must conceal my sentiments I must smother hope I must remember that he cannot care much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind I do not mean that I have his force to influence and his spell to attract I mean only that I have certain tastes and feelings in common with him. I must then repeat continually that we are for ever sundered—and yet while I breathe and think I must love him. Coffee is handed. The ladies since the gentlemen entered have become lively as larks conversation waxes brisk and merry. Colonel Dent and Mr Eshton argue on politics their wives listen. The two proud dowagers Lady Lynn and Lady Ingram confabulate together. Sir George—whom by-the-bye I have forgotten to describe—a very big and very fresh-looking country gentleman stands before their sofa coffee-cup in hand and occasionally puts in a word. Mr Frederick Lynn has taken a seat beside Mary Ingram and is showing her the engravings of a splendid volume she looks smiles now and then but apparently says little. The tall and phlegmatic Lord Ingram leans with folded arms on the chair-back of the little and lively Amy Eshton she glances up at him and chatters like a wren she likes him better than she does Mr Rochester. Henry Lynn has taken possession of an ottoman at the feet of Louisa Adèle shares it with him he is trying to talk French with her and Louisa laughs at his blunders. With whom will Blanche Ingram pair? She is standing alone at the table bending gracefully over an album. She seems waiting to be sought but she will not wait too long she herself selects a mate. Mr Rochester having quitted the Eshtons stands on the hearth as solitary as she stands by the table she confronts him taking her station on the opposite side of the mantelpiece. Mr Rochester I thought you were not fond of children? Nor am I. Then what induced you to take charge of such a little doll as that? pointing to Adèle. Where did you pick her up? I did not pick her up she was left on my hands. You should have sent her to school. I could not afford it schools are so dear. Why I suppose you have a governess for her I saw a person with her just now—is she gone? Oh no! there she is still behind the window-curtain. You pay her of course I should think it quite as expensive—more so for you have them both to keep in addition. I feared—or should I say hoped?—the allusion to me would make Mr Rochester glance my way and I involuntarily shrank farther into the shade but he never turned his eyes. I have not considered the subject said he indifferently looking straight before him. No you men never do consider economy and common sense. You should hear mama on the chapter of governesses Mary and I have had I should think a dozen at least in our day half of them detestable and the rest ridiculous and all incubi—were they not mama? Did you speak my own? The young lady thus claimed as the dowager’s special property reiterated her question with an explanation. My dearest don’t mention governesses the word makes me nervous. I have suffered a martyrdom from their incompetency and caprice. I thank Heaven I have now done with them! Mrs Dent here bent over to the pious lady and whispered something in her ear I suppose from the answer elicited it was a reminder that one of the anathematised race was present. Tant pis! said her Ladyship I hope it may do her good! Then in a lower tone but still loud enough for me to hear I noticed her I am a judge of physiognomy and in hers I see all the faults of her class. What are they madam? inquired Mr Rochester aloud. I will tell you in your private ear replied she wagging her turban three times with portentous significancy. But my curiosity will be past its appetite it craves food now. Ask Blanche she is nearer you than I. Oh don’t refer him to me mama! I have just one word to say of the whole tribe they are a nuisance. Not that I ever suffered much from them I took care to turn the tables. What tricks Theodore and I used to play on our Miss Wilsons and Mrs Greys and Madame Jouberts! Mary was always too sleepy to join in a plot with spirit. The best fun was with Madame Joubert Miss Wilson was a poor sickly thing lachrymose and low-spirited not worth the trouble of vanquishing in short and Mrs Grey was coarse and insensible no blow took effect on her. But poor Madame Joubert! I see her yet in her raging passions when we had driven her to extremities—spilt our tea crumbled our bread and butter tossed our books up to the ceiling and played a charivari with the ruler and desk the fender and fire-irons. Theodore do you remember those merry days? Yaas to be sure I do drawled Lord Ingram and the poor old stick used to cry out ‘Oh you villains childs!’—and then we sermonised her on the presumption of attempting to teach such clever blades as we were when she was herself so ignorant. We did and Tedo you know I helped you in prosecuting or persecuting your tutor whey-faced Mr Vining—the parson in the pip as we used to call him. He and Miss Wilson took the liberty of falling in love with each other—at least Tedo and I thought so we surprised sundry tender glances and sighs which we interpreted as tokens of ‘la belle passion’ and I promise you the public soon had the benefit of our discovery we employed it as a sort of lever to hoist our dead-weights from the house. Dear mama there as soon as she got an inkling of the business found out that it was of an immoral tendency. Did you not my lady-mother? Certainly my best. And I was quite right depend on that there are a thousand reasons why liaisons between governesses and tutors should never be tolerated a moment in any well-regulated house firstly— Oh gracious mama! Spare us the enumeration! Au reste we all know them danger of bad example to innocence of childhood distractions and consequent neglect of duty on the part of the attached—mutual alliance and reliance confidence thence resulting—insolence accompanying—mutiny and general blow-up. Am I right Baroness Ingram of Ingram Park? My lily-flower you are right now as always. Then no more need be said change the subject. Amy Eshton not hearing or not heeding this dictum joined in with her soft infantine tone Louisa and I used to quiz our governess too but she was such a good creature she would bear anything nothing put her out. She was never cross with us was she Louisa? No never we might do what we pleased ransack her desk and her workbox and turn her drawers inside out and she was so good-natured she would give us anything we asked for. I suppose now said Miss Ingram curling her lip sarcastically we shall have an abstract of the memoirs of all the governesses extant in order to avert such a visitation I again move the introduction of a new topic. Mr Rochester do you second my motion? Madam I support you on this point as on every other. Then on me be the onus of bringing it forward. Signior Eduardo are you in voice to-night? Donna Bianca if you command it I will be. Then signior I lay on you my sovereign behest to furbish up your lungs and other vocal organs as they will be wanted on my royal service. Who would not be the Rizzio of so divine a Mary? A fig for Rizzio! cried she tossing her head with all its curls as she moved to the piano. It is my opinion the fiddler David must have been an insipid sort of fellow I like black Bothwell better to my mind a man is nothing without a spice of the devil in him and history may say what it will of James Hepburn but I have a notion he was just the sort of wild fierce bandit hero whom I could have consented to gift with my hand. Gentlemen you hear! Now which of you most resembles Bothwell? cried Mr Rochester. I should say the preference lies with you responded Colonel Dent. On my honour I am much obliged to you was the reply. Miss Ingram who had now seated herself with proud grace at the piano spreading out her snowy robes in queenly amplitude commenced a brilliant prelude talking meantime. She appeared to be on her high horse to-night both her words and her air seemed intended to excite not only the admiration but the amazement of her auditors she was evidently bent on striking them as something very dashing and daring indeed. Oh I am so sick of the young men of the present day! exclaimed she rattling away at the instrument. Poor puny things not fit to stir a step beyond papa’s park gates nor to go even so far without mama’s permission and guardianship! Creatures so absorbed in care about their pretty faces and their white hands and their small feet as if a man had anything to do with beauty! As if loveliness were not the special prerogative of woman—her legitimate appanage and heritage! I grant an ugly woman is a blot on the fair face of creation but as to the gentlemen let them be solicitous to possess only strength and valour let their motto be—Hunt shoot and fight the rest is not worth a fillip. Such should be my device were I a man. Whenever I marry she continued after a pause which none interrupted I am resolved my husband shall not be a rival but a foil to me. I will suffer no competitor near the throne I shall exact an undivided homage his devotions shall not be shared between me and the shape he sees in his mirror. Mr Rochester now sing and I will play for you. I am all obedience was the response. Here then is a Corsair-song. Know that I doat on Corsairs and for that reason sing it con spirito. Commands from Miss Ingram’s lips would put spirit into a mug of milk and water. Take care then if you don’t please me I will shame you by showing how such things should be done. That is offering a premium on incapacity I shall now endeavour to fail. Gardez-vous en bien! If you err wilfully I shall devise a proportionate punishment. Miss Ingram ought to be clement for she has it in her power to inflict a chastisement beyond mortal endurance. Ha! explain! commanded the lady. Pardon me madam no need of explanation your own fine sense must inform you that one of your frowns would be a sufficient substitute for capital punishment. Sing! said she and again touching the piano she commenced an accompaniment in spirited style. Now is my time to slip away thought I but the tones that then severed the air arrested me. Mrs Fairfax had said Mr Rochester possessed a fine voice he did—a mellow powerful bass into which he threw his own feeling his own force finding a way through the ear to the heart and there waking sensation strangely. I waited till the last deep and full vibration had expired—till the tide of talk checked an instant had resumed its flow I then quitted my sheltered corner and made my exit by the side-door which was fortunately near. Thence a narrow passage led into the hall in crossing it I perceived my sandal was loose I stopped to tie it kneeling down for that purpose on the mat at the foot of the staircase. I heard the dining-room door unclose a gentleman came out rising hastily I stood face to face with him it was Mr Rochester. How do you do? he asked. I am very well sir. Why did you not come and speak to me in the room? I thought I might have retorted the question on him who put it but I would not take that freedom. I answered— I did not wish to disturb you as you seemed engaged sir. What have you been doing during my absence? Nothing particular teaching Adèle as usual. And getting a good deal paler than you were—as I saw at first sight. What is the matter? Nothing at all sir. Did you take any cold that night you half drowned me? Not the least. Return to the drawing-room you are deserting too early. I am tired sir. He looked at me for a minute. And a little depressed he said. What about? Tell me. Nothing—nothing sir. I am not depressed. But I affirm that you are so much depressed that a few more words would bring tears to your eyes—indeed they are there now shining and swimming and a bead has slipped from the lash and fallen on to the flag. If I had time and was not in mortal dread of some prating prig of a servant passing I would know what all this means. Well to-night I excuse you but understand that so long as my visitors stay I expect you to appear in the drawing-room every evening it is my wish don’t neglect it. Now go and send Sophie for Adèle. Good-night my— He stopped bit his lip and abruptly left me. ', 'Merry days were these at Thornfield Hall and busy days too how different from the first three months of stillness monotony and solitude I had passed beneath its roof! All sad feelings seemed now driven from the house all gloomy associations forgotten there was life everywhere movement all day long. You could not now traverse the gallery once so hushed nor enter the front chambers once so tenantless without encountering a smart lady’s-maid or a dandy valet. The kitchen the butler’s pantry the servants’ hall the entrance hall were equally alive and the saloons were only left void and still when the blue sky and halcyon sunshine of the genial spring weather called their occupants out into the grounds. Even when that weather was broken and continuous rain set in for some days no damp seemed cast over enjoyment indoor amusements only became more lively and varied in consequence of the stop put to outdoor gaiety. I wondered what they were going to do the first evening a change of entertainment was proposed they spoke of playing charades but in my ignorance I did not understand the term. The servants were called in the dining-room tables wheeled away the lights otherwise disposed the chairs placed in a semicircle opposite the arch. While Mr Rochester and the other gentlemen directed these alterations the ladies were running up and down stairs ringing for their maids. Mrs Fairfax was summoned to give information respecting the resources of the house in shawls dresses draperies of any kind and certain wardrobes of the third storey were ransacked and their contents in the shape of brocaded and hooped petticoats satin sacques black modes lace lappets &c. were brought down in armfuls by the abigails then a selection was made and such things as were chosen were carried to the boudoir within the drawing-room. Meantime Mr Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him and was selecting certain of their number to be of his party. Miss Ingram is mine of course said he afterwards he named the two Misses Eshton and Mrs Dent. He looked at me I happened to be near him as I had been fastening the clasp of Mrs Dent’s bracelet which had got loose. Will you play? he asked. I shook my head. He did not insist which I rather feared he would have done he allowed me to return quietly to my usual seat. He and his aids now withdrew behind the curtain the other party which was headed by Colonel Dent sat down on the crescent of chairs. One of the gentlemen Mr Eshton observing me seemed to propose that I should be asked to join them but Lady Ingram instantly negatived the notion. No I heard her say she looks too stupid for any game of the sort. Ere long a bell tinkled and the curtain drew up. Within the arch the bulky figure of Sir George Lynn whom Mr Rochester had likewise chosen was seen enveloped in a white sheet before him on a table lay open a large book and at his side stood Amy Eshton draped in Mr Rochester’s cloak and holding a book in her hand. Somebody unseen rang the bell merrily then Adèle who had insisted on being one of her guardian’s party bounded forward scattering round her the contents of a basket of flowers she carried on her arm. Then appeared the magnificent figure of Miss Ingram clad in white a long veil on her head and a wreath of roses round her brow by her side walked Mr Rochester and together they drew near the table. They knelt while Mrs Dent and Louisa Eshton dressed also in white took up their stations behind them. A ceremony followed in dumb show in which it was easy to recognise the pantomime of a marriage. At its termination Colonel Dent and his party consulted in whispers for two minutes then the Colonel called out— Bride! Mr Rochester bowed and the curtain fell. A considerable interval elapsed before it again rose. Its second rising displayed a more elaborately prepared scene than the last. The drawing-room as I have before observed was raised two steps above the dining-room and on the top of the upper step placed a yard or two back within the room appeared a large marble basin which I recognised as an ornament of the conservatory—where it usually stood surrounded by exotics and tenanted by gold fish—and whence it must have been transported with some trouble on account of its size and weight. Seated on the carpet by the side of this basin was seen Mr Rochester costumed in shawls with a turban on his head. His dark eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the costume exactly he looked the very model of an Eastern emir an agent or a victim of the bowstring. Presently advanced into view Miss Ingram. She too was attired in oriental fashion a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the waist an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples her beautifully-moulded arms bare one of them upraised in the act of supporting a pitcher poised gracefully on her head. Both her cast of form and feature her complexion and her general air suggested the idea of some Israelitish princess of the patriarchal days and such was doubtless the character she intended to represent. She approached the basin and bent over it as if to fill her pitcher she again lifted it to her head. The personage on the well-brink now seemed to accost her to make some request—She hasted let down her pitcher on her hand and gave him to drink. From the bosom of his robe he then produced a casket opened it and showed magnificent bracelets and earrings she acted astonishment and admiration kneeling he laid the treasure at her feet incredulity and delight were expressed by her looks and gestures the stranger fastened the bracelets on her arms and the rings in her ears. It was Eliezer and Rebecca the camels only were wanting. The divining party again laid their heads together apparently they could not agree about the word or syllable the scene illustrated. Colonel Dent their spokesman demanded the tableau of the whole whereupon the curtain again descended. On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed the rest being concealed by a screen hung with some sort of dark and coarse drapery. The marble basin was removed in its place stood a deal table and a kitchen chair these objects were visible by a very dim light proceeding from a horn lantern the wax candles being all extinguished. Amidst this sordid scene sat a man with his clenched hands resting on his knees and his eyes bent on the ground. I knew Mr Rochester though the begrimed face the disordered dress his coat hanging loose from one arm as if it had been almost torn from his back in a scuffle the desperate and scowling countenance the rough bristling hair might well have disguised him. As he moved a chain clanked to his wrists were attached fetters. Bridewell! exclaimed Colonel Dent and the charade was solved. A sufficient interval having elapsed for the performers to resume their ordinary costume they re-entered the dining-room. Mr Rochester led in Miss Ingram she was complimenting him on his acting. Do you know said she that of the three characters I liked you in the last best? Oh had you but lived a few years earlier what a gallant gentleman-highwayman you would have made! Is all the soot washed from my face? he asked turning it towards her. Alas! yes the more’s the pity! Nothing could be more becoming to your complexion than that ruffian’s rouge. You would like a hero of the road then? An English hero of the road would be the next best thing to an Italian bandit and that could only be surpassed by a Levantine pirate. Well whatever I am remember you are my wife we were married an hour since in the presence of all these witnesses. She giggled and her colour rose. Now Dent continued Mr Rochester it is your turn. And as the other party withdrew he and his band took the vacated seats. Miss Ingram placed herself at her leader’s right hand the other diviners filled the chairs on each side of him and her. I did not now watch the actors I no longer waited with interest for the curtain to rise my attention was absorbed by the spectators my eyes erewhile fixed on the arch were now irresistibly attracted to the semicircle of chairs. What charade Colonel Dent and his party played what word they chose how they acquitted themselves I no longer remember but I still see the consultation which followed each scene I see Mr Rochester turn to Miss Ingram and Miss Ingram to him I see her incline her head towards him till the jetty curls almost touch his shoulder and wave against his cheek I hear their mutual whisperings I recall their interchanged glances and something even of the feeling roused by the spectacle returns in memory at this moment. I have told you reader that I had learnt to love Mr Rochester I could not unlove him now merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me—because I might pass hours in his presence and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction—because I saw all his attentions appropriated by a great lady who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed who if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove him because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady—because I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her—because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek was yet in its very carelessness captivating and in its very pride irresistible. There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances though much to create despair. Much too you will think reader to engender jealousy if a woman in my position could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram’s. But I was not jealous or very rarely—the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy she was too inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox I mean what I say. She was very showy but she was not genuine she had a fine person many brilliant attainments but her mind was poor her heart barren by nature nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good she was not original she used to repeat sounding phrases from books she never offered nor had an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity tenderness and truth were not in her. Too often she betrayed this by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adèle pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her sometimes ordering her from the room and always treating her with coldness and acrimony. Other eyes besides mine watched these manifestations of character—watched them closely keenly shrewdly. Yes the future bridegroom Mr Rochester himself exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance and it was from this sagacity—this guardedness of his—this perfect clear consciousness of his fair one’s defects—this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her that my ever-torturing pain arose. I saw he was going to marry her for family perhaps political reasons because her rank and connections suited him I felt he had not given her his love and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point—this was where the nerve was touched and teased—this was where the fever was sustained and fed she could not charm him. If she had managed the victory at once and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet I should have covered my face turned to the wall and figuratively have died to them. If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman endowed with force fervour kindness sense I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers—jealousy and despair then my heart torn out and devoured I should have admired her—acknowledged her excellence and been quiet for the rest of my days and the more absolute her superiority the deeper would have been my admiration—the more truly tranquil my quiescence. But as matters really stood to watch Miss Ingram’s efforts at fascinating Mr Rochester to witness their repeated failure—herself unconscious that they did fail vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark and infatuatedly pluming herself on success when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure—to witness this was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint. Because when she failed I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr Rochester’s breast and fell harmless at his feet might I knew if shot by a surer hand have quivered keen in his proud heart—have called love into his stern eye and softness into his sardonic face or better still without weapons a silent conquest might have been won. Why can she not influence him more when she is privileged to draw so near to him? I asked myself. Surely she cannot truly like him or not like him with true affection! If she did she need not coin her smiles so lavishly flash her glances so unremittingly manufacture airs so elaborate graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she might by merely sitting quietly at his side saying little and looking less get nigher his heart. I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him but then it came of itself it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres and one had but to accept it—to answer what he asked without pretension to address him when needful without grimace—and it increased and grew kinder and more genial and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam. How will she manage to please him when they are married? I do not think she will manage it and yet it might be managed and his wife might I verily believe be the very happiest woman the sun shines on. I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr Rochester’s project of marrying for interest and connections. It surprised me when I first discovered that such was his intention I had thought him a man unlikely to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his choice of a wife but the longer I considered the position education &c. of the parties the less I felt justified in judging and blaming either him or Miss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and principles instilled into them doubtless from their childhood. All their class held these principles I supposed then they had reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me that were I a gentleman like him I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husband’s own happiness offered by this plan convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act. But in other points as well as this I was growing very lenient to my master I was forgetting all his faults for which I had once kept a sharp look-out. It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character to take the bad with the good and from the just weighing of both to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled the harshness that had startled me once were only like keen condiments in a choice dish their presence was pungent but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid. And as for the vague something—was it a sinister or a sorrowful a designing or a desponding expression?—that opened upon a careful observer now and then in his eye and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed that something which used to make me fear and shrink as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape that something I at intervals beheld still and with throbbing heart but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun I longed only to dare—to divine it and I thought Miss Ingram happy because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure explore its secrets and analyse their nature. Meantime while I thought only of my master and his future bride—saw only them heard only their discourse and considered only their movements of importance—the rest of the party were occupied with their own separate interests and pleasures. The Ladies Lynn and Ingram continued to consort in solemn conferences where they nodded their two turbans at each other and held up their four hands in confronting gestures of surprise or mystery or horror according to the theme on which their gossip ran like a pair of magnified puppets. Mild Mrs Dent talked with good-natured Mrs Eshton and the two sometimes bestowed a courteous word or smile on me. Sir George Lynn Colonel Dent and Mr Eshton discussed politics or county affairs or justice business. Lord Ingram flirted with Amy Eshton Louisa played and sang to and with one of the Messrs. Lynn and Mary Ingram listened languidly to the gallant speeches of the other. Sometimes all as with one consent suspended their by-play to observe and listen to the principal actors for after all Mr Rochester and—because closely connected with him—Miss Ingram were the life and soul of the party. If he was absent from the room an hour a perceptible dulness seemed to steal over the spirits of his guests and his re-entrance was sure to give a fresh impulse to the vivacity of conversation. The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly felt one day that he had been summoned to Millcote on business and was not likely to return till late. The afternoon was wet a walk the party had proposed to take to see a gipsy camp lately pitched on a common beyond Hay was consequently deferred. Some of the gentlemen were gone to the stables the younger ones together with the younger ladies were playing billiards in the billiard-room. The dowagers Ingram and Lynn sought solace in a quiet game at cards. Blanche Ingram after having repelled by supercilious taciturnity some efforts of Mrs Dent and Mrs Eshton to draw her into conversation had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano and then having fetched a novel from the library had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa and prepared to beguile by the spell of fiction the tedious hours of absence. The room and the house were silent only now and then the merriment of the billiard-players was heard from above. It was verging on dusk and the clock had already given warning of the hour to dress for dinner when little Adèle who knelt by me in the drawing-room window-seat suddenly exclaimed— Voilà Monsieur Rochester qui revient! I turned and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa the others too looked up from their several occupations for at the same time a crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible on the wet gravel. A post-chaise was approaching. What can possess him to come home in that style? said Miss Ingram. He rode Mesrour the black horse did he not when he went out? and Pilot was with him—what has he done with the animals? As she said this she approached her tall person and ample garments so near the window that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking of my spine in her eagerness she did not observe me at first but when she did she curled her lip and moved to another casement. The post-chaise stopped the driver rang the door-bell and a gentleman alighted attired in travelling garb but it was not Mr Rochester it was a tall fashionable-looking man a stranger. How provoking! exclaimed Miss Ingram you tiresome monkey! apostrophising Adèle who perched you up in the window to give false intelligence? and she cast on me an angry glance as if I were in fault. Some parleying was audible in the hall and soon the new-comer entered. He bowed to Lady Ingram as deeming her the eldest lady present. It appears I come at an inopportune time madam said he when my friend Mr Rochester is from home but I arrive from a very long journey and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns. His manner was polite his accent in speaking struck me as being somewhat unusual—not precisely foreign but still not altogether English his age might be about Mr Rochester’s—between thirty and forty his complexion was singularly sallow otherwise he was a fine-looking man at first sight especially. On closer examination you detected something in his face that displeased or rather that failed to please. His features were regular but too relaxed his eye was large and well cut but the life looking out of it was a tame vacant life—at least so I thought. The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party. It was not till after dinner that I saw him again he then seemed quite at his ease. But I liked his physiognomy even less than before it struck me as being at the same time unsettled and inanimate. His eye wandered and had no meaning in its wandering this gave him an odd look such as I never remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not an unamiable-looking man he repelled me exceedingly there was no power in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape no firmness in that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth there was no thought on the low even forehead no command in that blank brown eye. As I sat in my usual nook and looked at him with the light of the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him—for he occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire and kept shrinking still nearer as if he were cold I compared him with Mr Rochester. I think with deference be it spoken the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon between a meek sheep and the rough-coated keen-eyed dog its guardian. He had spoken of Mr Rochester as an old friend. A curious friendship theirs must have been a pointed illustration indeed of the old adage that extremes meet. Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him and I caught at times scraps of their conversation across the room. At first I could not make much sense of what I heard for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary Ingram who sat nearer to me confused the fragmentary sentences that reached me at intervals. These last were discussing the stranger they both called him a beautiful man. Louisa said he was a love of a creature and she adored him and Mary instanced his pretty little mouth and nice nose as her ideal of the charming. And what a sweet-tempered forehead he has! cried Louisa—so smooth—none of those frowning irregularities I dislike so much and such a placid eye and smile! And then to my great relief Mr Henry Lynn summoned them to the other side of the room to settle some point about the deferred excursion to Hay Common. I was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the fire and I presently gathered that the new-comer was called Mr Mason then I learned that he was but just arrived in England and that he came from some hot country which was the reason doubtless his face was so sallow and that he sat so near the hearth and wore a surtout in the house. Presently the words Jamaica Kingston Spanish Town indicated the West Indies as his residence and it was with no little surprise I gathered ere long that he had there first seen and become acquainted with Mr Rochester. He spoke of his friend’s dislike of the burning heats the hurricanes and rainy seasons of that region. I knew Mr Rochester had been a traveller Mrs Fairfax had said so but I thought the continent of Europe had bounded his wanderings till now I had never heard a hint given of visits to more distant shores. I was pondering these things when an incident and a somewhat unexpected one broke the thread of my musings. Mr Mason shivering as some one chanced to open the door asked for more coal to be put on the fire which had burnt out its flame though its mass of cinder still shone hot and red. The footman who brought the coal in going out stopped near Mr Eshton’s chair and said something to him in a low voice of which I heard only the words old woman—quite troublesome. Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not take herself off replied the magistrate. No—stop! interrupted Colonel Dent. Don’t send her away Eshton we might turn the thing to account better consult the ladies. And speaking aloud he continued—Ladies you talked of going to Hay Common to visit the gipsy camp Sam here says that one of the old Mother Bunches is in the servants’ hall at this moment and insists upon being brought in before ‘the quality’ to tell them their fortunes. Would you like to see her? Surely colonel cried Lady Ingram you would not encourage such a low impostor? Dismiss her by all means at once! But I cannot persuade her to go away my lady said the footman nor can any of the servants Mrs Fairfax is with her just now entreating her to be gone but she has taken a chair in the chimney-corner and says nothing shall stir her from it till she gets leave to come in here. What does she want? asked Mrs Eshton. ‘To tell the gentry their fortunes’ she says ma’am and she swears she must and will do it. What is she like? inquired the Misses Eshton in a breath. A shockingly ugly old creature miss almost as black as a crock. Why she’s a real sorceress! cried Frederick Lynn. Let us have her in of course. To be sure rejoined his brother it would be a thousand pities to throw away such a chance of fun. My dear boys what are you thinking about? exclaimed Mrs Lynn. I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent proceeding chimed in the Dowager Ingram. Indeed mama but you can—and will pronounced the haughty voice of Blanche as she turned round on the piano-stool where till now she had sat silent apparently examining sundry sheets of music. I have a curiosity to hear my fortune told therefore Sam order the beldame forward. My darling Blanche! recollect— I do—I recollect all you can suggest and I must have my will—quick Sam! Yes—yes—yes! cried all the juveniles both ladies and gentlemen. Let her come—it will be excellent sport! The footman still lingered. She looks such a rough one said he. Go! ejaculated Miss Ingram and the man went. Excitement instantly seized the whole party a running fire of raillery and jests was proceeding when Sam returned. She won’t come now said he. She says it’s not her mission to appear before the ‘vulgar herd’ them’s her words. I must show her into a room by herself and then those who wish to consult her must go to her one by one. You see now my queenly Blanche began Lady Ingram she encroaches. Be advised my angel girl—and— Show her into the library of course cut in the angel girl. It is not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either I mean to have her all to myself. Is there a fire in the library? Yes ma’am—but she looks such a tinkler. Cease that chatter blockhead! and do my bidding. Again Sam vanished and mystery animation expectation rose to full flow once more. She’s ready now said the footman as he reappeared. She wishes to know who will be her first visitor. I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies go said Colonel Dent. Tell her Sam a gentleman is coming. Sam went and returned. She says sir that she’ll have no gentlemen they need not trouble themselves to come near her nor he added with difficulty suppressing a titter any ladies either except the young and single. By Jove she has taste! exclaimed Henry Lynn. Miss Ingram rose solemnly I go first she said in a tone which might have befitted the leader of a forlorn hope mounting a breach in the van of his men. Oh my best! oh my dearest! pause—reflect! was her mama’s cry but she swept past her in stately silence passed through the door which Colonel Dent held open and we heard her enter the library. A comparative silence ensued. Lady Ingram thought it le cas to wring her hands which she did accordingly. Miss Mary declared she felt for her part she never dared venture. Amy and Louisa Eshton tittered under their breath and looked a little frightened. The minutes passed very slowly fifteen were counted before the library-door again opened. Miss Ingram returned to us through the arch. Would she laugh? Would she take it as a joke? All eyes met her with a glance of eager curiosity and she met all eyes with one of rebuff and coldness she looked neither flurried nor merry she walked stiffly to her seat and took it in silence. Well Blanche? said Lord Ingram. What did she say sister? asked Mary. What did you think? How do you feel? Is she a real fortune-teller? demanded the Misses Eshton. Now now good people returned Miss Ingram don’t press upon me. Really your organs of wonder and credulity are easily excited you seem by the importance of you all—my good mama included—ascribe to this matter absolutely to believe we have a genuine witch in the house who is in close alliance with the old gentleman. I have seen a gipsy vagabond she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of palmistry and told me what such people usually tell. My whim is gratified and now I think Mr Eshton will do well to put the hag in the stocks to-morrow morning as he threatened. Miss Ingram took a book leant back in her chair and so declined further conversation. I watched her for nearly half-an-hour during all that time she never turned a page and her face grew momently darker more dissatisfied and more sourly expressive of disappointment. She had obviously not heard anything to her advantage and it seemed to me from her prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity that she herself notwithstanding her professed indifference attached undue importance to whatever revelations had been made her. During all that time she never turned a page Meantime Mary Ingram Amy and Louisa Eshton declared they dared not go alone and yet they all wished to go. A negotiation was opened through the medium of the ambassador Sam and after much pacing to and fro till I think the said Sam’s calves must have ached with the exercise permission was at last with great difficulty extorted from the rigorous Sibyl for the three to wait upon her in a body. Their visit was not so still as Miss Ingram’s had been we heard hysterical giggling and little shrieks proceeding from the library and at the end of about twenty minutes they burst the door open and came running across the hall as if they were half-scared out of their wits. I am sure she is something not right! they cried one and all. She told us such things! She knows all about us! and they sank breathless into the various seats the gentlemen hastened to bring them. Pressed for further explanation they declared she had told them of things they had said and done when they were mere children described books and ornaments they had in their boudoirs at home keepsakes that different relations had presented to them. They affirmed that she had even divined their thoughts and had whispered in the ear of each the name of the person she liked best in the world and informed them of what they most wished for. Here the gentlemen interposed with earnest petitions to be further enlightened on these two last-named points but they got only blushes ejaculations tremors and titters in return for their importunity. The matrons meantime offered vinaigrettes and wielded fans and again and again reiterated the expression of their concern that their warning had not been taken in time and the elder gentlemen laughed and the younger urged their services on the agitated fair ones. In the midst of the tumult and while my eyes and ears were fully engaged in the scene before me I heard a hem close at my elbow I turned and saw Sam. If you please miss the gipsy declares that there is another young single lady in the room who has not been to her yet and she swears she will not go till she has seen all. I thought it must be you there is no one else for it. What shall I tell her? Oh I will go by all means I answered and I was glad of the unexpected opportunity to gratify my much-excited curiosity. I slipped out of the room unobserved by any eye—for the company were gathered in one mass about the trembling trio just returned—and I closed the door quietly behind me. If you like miss said Sam I’ll wait in the hall for you and if she frightens you just call and I’ll come in. No Sam return to the kitchen I am not in the least afraid. Nor was I but I was a good deal interested and excited. ', 'The library looked tranquil enough as I entered it and the Sibyl—if Sibyl she were—was seated snugly enough in an easy-chair at the chimney-corner. She had on a red cloak and a black bonnet or rather a broad-brimmed gipsy hat tied down with a striped handkerchief under her chin. An extinguished candle stood on the table she was bending over the fire and seemed reading in a little black book like a prayer-book by the light of the blaze she muttered the words to herself as most old women do while she read she did not desist immediately on my entrance it appeared she wished to finish a paragraph. I stood on the rug and warmed my hands which were rather cold with sitting at a distance from the drawing-room fire. I felt now as composed as ever I did in my life there was nothing indeed in the gipsy’s appearance to trouble one’s calm. She shut her book and slowly looked up her hat-brim partially shaded her face yet I could see as she raised it that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and black elf-locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed under her chin and came half over her cheeks or rather jaws her eye confronted me at once with a bold and direct gaze. Well and you want your fortune told? she said in a voice as decided as her glance as harsh as her features. I don’t care about it mother you may please yourself but I ought to warn you I have no faith. It’s like your impudence to say so I expected it of you I heard it in your step as you crossed the threshold. Did you? You’ve a quick ear. I have and a quick eye and a quick brain. You need them all in your trade. I do especially when I’ve customers like you to deal with. Why don’t you tremble? I’m not cold. Why don’t you turn pale? I am not sick. Why don’t you consult my art? I’m not silly. The old crone nichered a laugh under her bonnet and bandage she then drew out a short black pipe and lighting it began to smoke. Having indulged a while in this sedative she raised her bent body took the pipe from her lips and while gazing steadily at the fire said very deliberately— You are cold you are sick and you are silly. Prove it I rejoined. I will in few words. You are cold because you are alone no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick because the best of feelings the highest and the sweetest given to man keeps far away from you. You are silly because suffer as you may you will not beckon it to approach nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you. She again put her short black pipe to her lips and renewed her smoking with vigour. You might say all that to almost any one who you knew lived as a solitary dependent in a great house. I might say it to almost any one but would it be true of almost any one? In my circumstances. Yes just so in your circumstances but find me another precisely placed as you are. It would be easy to find you thousands. You could scarcely find me one. If you knew it you are peculiarly situated very near happiness yes within reach of it. The materials are all prepared there only wants a movement to combine them. Chance laid them somewhat apart let them be once approached and bliss results. I don’t understand enigmas. I never could guess a riddle in my life. If you wish me to speak more plainly show me your palm. And I must cross it with silver I suppose? To be sure. I gave her a shilling she put it into an old stocking-foot which she took out of her pocket and having tied it round and returned it she told me to hold out my hand. I did. She approached her face to the palm and pored over it without touching it. It is too fine said she. I can make nothing of such a hand as that almost without lines besides what is in a palm? Destiny is not written there. I believe you said I. No she continued it is in the face on the forehead about the eyes in the lines of the mouth. Kneel and lift up your head. Ah! now you are coming to reality I said as I obeyed her. I shall begin to put some faith in you presently. I knelt within half a yard of her. She stirred the fire so that a ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal the glare however as she sat only threw her face into deeper shadow mine it illumined. I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night she said when she had examined me a while. I wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern just as little sympathetic communion passing between you and them as if they were really mere shadows of human forms and not the actual substance. I feel tired often sleepy sometimes but seldom sad. Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with whispers of the future? Not I. The utmost I hope is to save money enough out of my earnings to set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself. A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on and sitting in that window-seat you see I know your habits— You have learned them from the servants. Ah! you think yourself sharp. Well perhaps I have to speak truth I have an acquaintance with one of them Mrs Poole— I started to my feet when I heard the name. You have—have you? thought I there is diablerie in the business after all then! Don’t be alarmed continued the strange being she’s a safe hand is Mrs Poole close and quiet any one may repose confidence in her. But as I was saying sitting in that window-seat do you think of nothing but your future school? Have you no present interest in any of the company who occupy the sofas and chairs before you? Is there not one face you study? one figure whose movements you follow with at least curiosity? I like to observe all the faces and all the figures. But do you never single one from the rest—or it may be two? I do frequently when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling a tale it amuses me to watch them. What tale do you like best to hear? Oh I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme—courtship and promise to end in the same catastrophe—marriage. And do you like that monotonous theme? Positively I don’t care about it it is nothing to me. Nothing to you? When a lady young and full of life and health charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank and fortune sits and smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you— I what? You know—and perhaps think well of. I don’t know the gentlemen here. I have scarcely interchanged a syllable with one of them and as to thinking well of them I consider some respectable and stately and middle-aged and others young dashing handsome and lively but certainly they are all at liberty to be the recipients of whose smiles they please without my feeling disposed to consider the transaction of any moment to me. You don’t know the gentlemen here? You have not exchanged a syllable with one of them? Will you say that of the master of the house! He is not at home. A profound remark! A most ingenious quibble! He went to Millcote this morning and will be back here to-night or to-morrow does that circumstance exclude him from the list of your acquaintance—blot him as it were out of existence? No but I can scarcely see what Mr Rochester has to do with the theme you had introduced. I was talking of ladies smiling in the eyes of gentlemen and of late so many smiles have been shed into Mr Rochester’s eyes that they overflow like two cups filled above the brim have you never remarked that? Mr Rochester has a right to enjoy the society of his guests. No question about his right but have you never observed that of all the tales told here about matrimony Mr Rochester has been favoured with the most lively and the most continuous? The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator. I said this rather to myself than to the gipsy whose strange talk voice manner had by this time wrapped me in a kind of dream. One unexpected sentence came from her lips after another till I got involved in a web of mystification and wondered what unseen spirit had been sitting for weeks by my heart watching its workings and taking record of every pulse. Eagerness of a listener! repeated she yes Mr Rochester has sat by the hour his ear inclined to the fascinating lips that took such delight in their task of communicating and Mr Rochester was so willing to receive and looked so grateful for the pastime given him you have noticed this? Grateful! I cannot remember detecting gratitude in his face. Detecting! You have analysed then. And what did you detect if not gratitude? I said nothing. You have seen love have you not?—and looking forward you have seen him married and beheld his bride happy? Humph! Not exactly. Your witch’s skill is rather at fault sometimes. What the devil have you seen then? Never mind I came here to inquire not to confess. Is it known that Mr Rochester is to be married? Yes and to the beautiful Miss Ingram. Shortly? Appearances would warrant that conclusion and no doubt though with an audacity that wants chastising out of you you seem to question it they will be a superlatively happy pair. He must love such a handsome noble witty accomplished lady and probably she loves him or if not his person at least his purse. I know she considers the Rochester estate eligible to the last degree though God pardon me! I told her something on that point about an hour ago which made her look wondrous grave the corners of her mouth fell half an inch. I would advise her blackaviced suitor to look out if another comes with a longer or clearer rent-roll—he’s dished— But mother I did not come to hear Mr Rochester’s fortune I came to hear my own and you have told me nothing of it. Your fortune is yet doubtful when I examined your face one trait contradicted another. Chance has meted you a measure of happiness that I know. I knew it before I came here this evening. She has laid it carefully on one side for you. I saw her do it. It depends on yourself to stretch out your hand and take it up but whether you will do so is the problem I study. Kneel again on the rug. Don’t keep me long the fire scorches me. She did not stoop towards me but only gazed leaning back in her chair I knelt. She did not stoop towards me but only gazed leaning back in her chair. She began muttering— The flame flickers in the eye the eye shines like dew it looks soft and full of feeling it smiles at my jargon it is susceptible impression follows impression through its clear sphere where it ceases to smile it is sad an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid that signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness. It turns from me it will not suffer further scrutiny it seems to deny by a mocking glance the truth of the discoveries I have already made—to disown the charge both of sensibility and chagrin its pride and reserve only confirm me in my opinion. The eye is favourable. As to the mouth it delights at times in laughter it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often and have human affection for its interlocutor. That feature too is propitious. I see no enemy to a fortunate issue but in the brow and that brow professes to say—‘I can live alone if self-respect and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.’ The forehead declares ‘Reason sits firm and holds the reins and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously like true heathens as they are and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind earthquake-shock and fire may pass by but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.’ Well said forehead your declaration shall be respected. I have formed my plans—right plans I deem them—and in them I have attended to the claims of conscience the counsels of reason. I know how soon youth would fade and bloom perish if in the cup of bliss offered but one dreg of shame or one flavour of remorse were detected and I do not want sacrifice sorrow dissolution—such is not my taste. I wish to foster not to blight—to earn gratitude not to wring tears of blood—no nor of brine my harvest must be in smiles in endearments in sweet—That will do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this moment ad infinitum but I dare not. So far I have governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore I would act but further might try me beyond my strength. Rise Miss Eyre leave me ‘the play is played out.’ Where was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had I been dreaming? Did I dream still? The old woman’s voice had changed her accent her gesture and all were familiar to me as my own face in a glass—as the speech of my own tongue. I got up but did not go. I looked I stirred the fire and I looked again but she drew her bonnet and her bandage closer about her face and again beckoned me to depart. The flame illuminated her hand stretched out roused now and on the alert for discoveries I at once noticed that hand. It was no more the withered limb of eld than my own it was a rounded supple member with smooth fingers symmetrically turned a broad ring flashed on the little finger and stooping forward I looked at it and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times before. Again I looked at the face which was no longer turned from me—on the contrary the bonnet was doffed the bandage displaced the head advanced. Well Jane do you know me? asked the familiar voice. Only take off the red cloak sir and then— But the string is in a knot—help me. Break it sir. There then—‘Off ye lendings!’ And Mr Rochester stepped out of his disguise. Now sir what a strange idea! But well carried out eh? Don’t you think so? With the ladies you must have managed well. But not with you? You did not act the character of a gipsy with me. What character did I act? My own? No some unaccountable one. In short I believe you have been trying to draw me out—or in you have been talking nonsense to make me talk nonsense. It is scarcely fair sir. Do you forgive me Jane? I cannot tell till I have thought it all over. If on reflection I find I have fallen into no great absurdity I shall try to forgive you but it was not right. Oh you have been very correct—very careful very sensible. I reflected and thought on the whole I had. It was a comfort but indeed I had been on my guard almost from the beginning of the interview. Something of masquerade I suspected. I knew gipsies and fortune-tellers did not express themselves as this seeming old woman had expressed herself besides I had noted her feigned voice her anxiety to conceal her features. But my mind had been running on Grace Poole—that living enigma that mystery of mysteries as I considered her. I had never thought of Mr Rochester. Well said he what are you musing about? What does that grave smile signify? Wonder and self-congratulation sir. I have your permission to retire now I suppose? No stay a moment and tell me what the people in the drawing-room yonder are doing. Discussing the gipsy I daresay. Sit down!—Let me hear what they said about me. I had better not stay long sir it must be near eleven o’clock. Oh are you aware Mr Rochester that a stranger has arrived here since you left this morning? A stranger!—no who can it be? I expected no one is he gone? No he said he had known you long and that he could take the liberty of installing himself here till you returned. The devil he did! Did he give his name? His name is Mason sir and he comes from the West Indies from Spanish Town in Jamaica I think. Mr Rochester was standing near me he had taken my hand as if to lead me to a chair. As I spoke he gave my wrist a convulsive grip the smile on his lips froze apparently a spasm caught his breath. Mason!—the West Indies! he said in the tone one might fancy a speaking automaton to enounce its single words Mason!—the West Indies! he reiterated and he went over the syllables three times growing in the intervals of speaking whiter than ashes he hardly seemed to know what he was doing. Do you feel ill sir? I inquired. Jane I’ve got a blow I’ve got a blow Jane! He staggered. Oh lean on me sir. Jane you offered me your shoulder once before let me have it now. Yes sir yes and my arm. He sat down and made me sit beside him. Holding my hand in both his own he chafed it gazing on me at the same time with the most troubled and dreary look. My little friend! said he I wish I were in a quiet island with only you and trouble and danger and hideous recollections removed from me. Can I help you sir?—I’d give my life to serve you. Jane if aid is wanted I’ll seek it at your hands I promise you that. Thank you sir. Tell me what to do—I’ll try at least to do it. Fetch me now Jane a glass of wine from the dining-room they will be at supper there and tell me if Mason is with them and what he is doing. I went. I found all the party in the dining-room at supper as Mr Rochester had said they were not seated at table—the supper was arranged on the sideboard each had taken what he chose and they stood about here and there in groups their plates and glasses in their hands. Every one seemed in high glee laughter and conversation were general and animated. Mr Mason stood near the fire talking to Colonel and Mrs Dent and appeared as merry as any of them. I filled a wine-glass I saw Miss Ingram watch me frowningly as I did so she thought I was taking a liberty I daresay and I returned to the library. Mr Rochester’s extreme pallor had disappeared and he looked once more firm and stern. He took the glass from my hand. Here is to your health ministrant spirit! he said. He swallowed the contents and returned it to me. What are they doing Jane? Laughing and talking sir. They don’t look grave and mysterious as if they had heard something strange? Not at all they are full of jests and gaiety. And Mason? He was laughing too. If all these people came in a body and spat at me what would you do Jane? Turn them out of the room sir if I could. He half smiled. But if I were to go to them and they only looked at me coldly and whispered sneeringly amongst each other and then dropped off and left me one by one what then? Would you go with them? I rather think not sir I should have more pleasure in staying with you. To comfort me? Yes sir to comfort you as well as I could. And if they laid you under a ban for adhering to me? I probably should know nothing about their ban and if I did I should care nothing about it. Then you could dare censure for my sake? I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence as you I am sure do. Go back now into the room step quietly up to Mason and whisper in his ear that Mr Rochester is come and wishes to see him show him in here and then leave me. Yes sir. I did his behest. The company all stared at me as I passed straight among them. I sought Mr Mason delivered the message and preceded him from the room I ushered him into the library and then I went upstairs. At a late hour after I had been in bed some time I heard the visitors repair to their chambers I distinguished Mr Rochester’s voice and heard him say This way Mason this is your room. He spoke cheerfully the gay tones set my heart at ease. I was soon asleep. ', 'I had forgotten to draw my curtain which I usually did and also to let down my window-blind. The consequence was that when the moon which was full and bright for the night was fine came in her course to that space in the sky opposite my casement and looked in at me through the unveiled panes her glorious gaze roused me. Awaking in the dead of night I opened my eyes on her disk—silver-white and crystal clear. It was beautiful but too solemn I half rose and stretched my arm to draw the curtain. Good God! What a cry! The night—its silence—its rest was rent in twain by a savage a sharp a shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall. My pulse stopped my heart stood still my stretched arm was paralysed. The cry died and was not renewed. Indeed whatever being uttered that fearful shriek could not soon repeat it not the widest-winged condor on the Andes could twice in succession send out such a yell from the cloud shrouding his eyrie. The thing delivering such utterance must rest ere it could repeat the effort. It came out of the third storey for it passed overhead. And overhead—yes in the room just above my chamber-ceiling—I now heard a struggle a deadly one it seemed from the noise and a half-smothered voice shouted— Help! help! help! three times rapidly. Will no one come? it cried and then while the staggering and stamping went on wildly I distinguished through plank and plaster— Rochester! Rochester! for God’s sake come! A chamber-door opened some one ran or rushed along the gallery. Another step stamped on the flooring above and something fell and there was silence. I had put on some clothes though horror shook all my limbs I issued from my apartment. The sleepers were all aroused ejaculations terrified murmurs sounded in every room door after door unclosed one looked out and another looked out the gallery filled. Gentlemen and ladies alike had quitted their beds and Oh! what is it?—Who is hurt?—What has happened?—Fetch a light!—Is it fire?—Are there robbers?—Where shall we run? was demanded confusedly on all hands. But for the moonlight they would have been in complete darkness. They ran to and fro they crowded together some sobbed some stumbled the confusion was inextricable. Where the devil is Rochester? cried Colonel Dent. I cannot find him in his bed. Here! here! was shouted in return. Be composed all of you I’m coming. And the door at the end of the gallery opened and Mr Rochester advanced with a candle he had just descended from the upper storey. One of the ladies ran to him directly she seized his arm it was Miss Ingram. What awful event has taken place? said she. Speak! let us know the worst at once! But don’t pull me down or strangle me he replied for the Misses Eshton were clinging about him now and the two dowagers in vast white wrappers were bearing down on him like ships in full sail. All’s right!—all’s right! he cried. It’s a mere rehearsal of Much Ado about Nothing. Ladies keep off or I shall wax dangerous. And dangerous he looked his black eyes darted sparks. Calming himself by an effort he added— A servant has had the nightmare that is all. She’s an excitable nervous person she construed her dream into an apparition or something of that sort no doubt and has taken a fit with fright. Now then I must see you all back into your rooms for till the house is settled she cannot be looked after. Gentlemen have the goodness to set the ladies the example. Miss Ingram I am sure you will not fail in evincing superiority to idle terrors. Amy and Louisa return to your nests like a pair of doves as you are. Mesdames to the dowagers you will take cold to a dead certainty if you stay in this chill gallery any longer. And so by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding he contrived to get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories. I did not wait to be ordered back to mine but retreated unnoticed as unnoticed I had left it. Not however to go to bed on the contrary I began and dressed myself carefully. The sounds I had heard after the scream and the words that had been uttered had probably been heard only by me for they had proceeded from the room above mine but they assured me that it was not a servant’s dream which had thus struck horror through the house and that the explanation Mr Rochester had given was merely an invention framed to pacify his guests. I dressed then to be ready for emergencies. When dressed I sat a long time by the window looking out over the silent grounds and silvered fields and waiting for I knew not what. It seemed to me that some event must follow the strange cry struggle and call. No stillness returned each murmur and movement ceased gradually and in about an hour Thornfield Hall was again as hushed as a desert. It seemed that sleep and night had resumed their empire. Meantime the moon declined she was about to set. Not liking to sit in the cold and darkness I thought I would lie down on my bed dressed as I was. I left the window and moved with little noise across the carpet as I stooped to take off my shoes a cautious hand tapped low at the door. Am I wanted? I asked. Are you up? asked the voice I expected to hear viz. my master’s. Yes sir. And dressed? Yes. Come out then quietly. I obeyed. Mr Rochester stood in the gallery holding a light. I want you he said come this way take your time and make no noise. My slippers were thin I could walk the matted floor as softly as a cat. He glided up the gallery and up the stairs and stopped in the dark low corridor of the fateful third storey I had followed and stood at his side. Have you a sponge in your room? he asked in a whisper. Yes sir. Have you any salts—volatile salts? Yes. Go back and fetch both. I returned sought the sponge on the washstand the salts in my drawer and once more retraced my steps. He still waited he held a key in his hand approaching one of the small black doors he put it in the lock he paused and addressed me again. You don’t turn sick at the sight of blood? I think I shall not I have never been tried yet. I felt a thrill while I answered him but no coldness and no faintness. Just give me your hand he said it will not do to risk a fainting fit. I put my fingers into his. Warm and steady was his remark he turned the key and opened the door. I saw a room I remembered to have seen before the day Mrs Fairfax showed me over the house it was hung with tapestry but the tapestry was now looped up in one part and there was a door apparent which had then been concealed. This door was open a light shone out of the room within I heard thence a snarling snatching sound almost like a dog quarrelling. Mr Rochester putting down his candle said to me Wait a minute and he went forward to the inner apartment. A shout of laughter greeted his entrance noisy at first and terminating in Grace Poole’s own goblin ha! ha! She then was there. He made some sort of arrangement without speaking though I heard a low voice address him he came out and closed the door behind him. Here Jane! he said and I walked round to the other side of a large bed which with its drawn curtains concealed a considerable portion of the chamber. An easy-chair was near the bed-head a man sat in it dressed with the exception of his coat he was still his head leant back his eyes were closed. Mr Rochester held the candle over him I recognised in his pale and seemingly lifeless face—the stranger Mason I saw too that his linen on one side and one arm was almost soaked in blood. Hold the candle said Mr Rochester and I took it he fetched a basin of water from the washstand Hold that said he. I obeyed. He took the sponge dipped it in and moistened the corpse-like face he asked for my smelling-bottle and applied it to the nostrils. Mr Mason shortly unclosed his eyes he groaned. Mr Rochester opened the shirt of the wounded man whose arm and shoulder were bandaged he sponged away blood trickling fast down. Is there immediate danger? murmured Mr Mason. Pooh! No—a mere scratch. Don’t be so overcome man bear up! I’ll fetch a surgeon for you now myself you’ll be able to be removed by morning I hope. Jane he continued. Sir? I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman for an hour or perhaps two hours you will sponge the blood as I do when it returns if he feels faint you will put the glass of water on that stand to his lips and your salts to his nose. You will not speak to him on any pretext—and—Richard it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her open your lips—agitate yourself—and I’ll not answer for the consequences. Again the poor man groaned he looked as if he dared not move fear either of death or of something else appeared almost to paralyse him. Mr Rochester put the now bloody sponge into my hand and I proceeded to use it as he had done. He watched me a second then saying Remember!—No conversation he left the room. I experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock and the sound of his retreating step ceased to be heard. Here then I was in the third storey fastened into one of its mystic cells night around me a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and hands a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door yes—that was appalling—the rest I could bear but I shuddered at the thought of Grace Poole bursting out upon me. I must keep to my post however. I must watch this ghastly countenance—these blue still lips forbidden to unclose—these eyes now shut now opening now wandering through the room now fixing on me and ever glazed with the dulness of horror. I must dip my hand again and again in the basin of blood and water and wipe away the trickling gore. I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my employment the shadows darken on the wrought antique tapestry round me and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed and quiver strangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite—whose front divided into twelve panels bore in grim design the heads of the twelve apostles each enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame while above them at the top rose an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ. According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here or glanced there it was now the bearded physician Luke that bent his brow now St. John’s long hair that waved and anon the devilish face of Judas that grew out of the panel and seemed gathering life and threatening a revelation of the arch-traitor—of Satan himself—in his subordinate’s form. Amidst all this I had to listen as well as watch to listen for the movements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den. But since Mr Rochester’s visit it seemed spellbound all the night I heard but three sounds at three long intervals—a step creak a momentary renewal of the snarling canine noise and a deep human groan. Then my own thoughts worried me. What crime was this that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner?—what mystery that broke out now in fire and now in blood at the deadest hours of night? What creature was it that masked in an ordinary woman’s face and shape uttered the voice now of a mocking demon and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey? And this man I bent over—this commonplace quiet stranger—how had he become involved in the web of horror? and why had the Fury flown at him? What made him seek this quarter of the house at an untimely season when he should have been asleep in bed? I had heard Mr Rochester assign him an apartment below—what brought him here! And why now was he so tame under the violence or treachery done him? Why did he so quietly submit to the concealment Mr Rochester enforced? Why did Mr Rochester enforce this concealment? His guest had been outraged his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion! Lastly I saw Mr Mason was submissive to Mr Rochester that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former the few words which had passed between them assured me of this. It was evident that in their former intercourse the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active energy of the other whence then had arisen Mr Rochester’s dismay when he heard of Mr Mason’s arrival? Why had the mere name of this unresisting individual—whom his word now sufficed to control like a child—fallen on him a few hours since as a thunderbolt might fall on an oak? Oh! I could not forget his look and his paleness when he whispered Jane I have got a blow—I have got a blow Jane. I could not forget how the arm had trembled which he rested on my shoulder and it was no light matter which could thus bow the resolute spirit and thrill the vigorous frame of Fairfax Rochester. When will he come? When will he come? I cried inwardly as the night lingered and lingered—as my bleeding patient drooped moaned sickened and neither day nor aid arrived. I had again and again held the water to Mason’s white lips again and again offered him the stimulating salts my efforts seemed ineffectual either bodily or mental suffering or loss of blood or all three combined were fast prostrating his strength. He moaned so and looked so weak wild and lost I feared he was dying and I might not even speak to him. The candle wasted at last went out as it expired I perceived streaks of grey light edging the window curtains dawn was then approaching. Presently I heard Pilot bark far below out of his distant kennel in the courtyard hope revived. Nor was it unwarranted in five minutes more the grating key the yielding lock warned me my watch was relieved. It could not have lasted more than two hours many a week has seemed shorter. Mr Rochester entered and with him the surgeon he had been to fetch. Now Carter be on the alert he said to this last I give you but half-an-hour for dressing the wound fastening the bandages getting the patient downstairs and all. But is he fit to move sir? No doubt of it it is nothing serious he is nervous his spirits must be kept up. Come set to work. Mr Rochester drew back the thick curtain drew up the holland blind let in all the daylight he could and I was surprised and cheered to see how far dawn was advanced what rosy streaks were beginning to brighten the east. Then he approached Mason whom the surgeon was already handling. Now my good fellow how are you? he asked. She’s done for me I fear was the faint reply. Not a whit!—courage! This day fortnight you’ll hardly be a pin the worse of it you’ve lost a little blood that’s all. Carter assure him there’s no danger. I can do that conscientiously said Carter who had now undone the bandages only I wish I could have got here sooner he would not have bled so much—but how is this? The flesh on the shoulder is torn as well as cut. This wound was not done with a knife there have been teeth here! She bit me he murmured. She worried me like a tigress when Rochester got the knife from her. You should not have yielded you should have grappled with her at once said Mr Rochester. But under such circumstances what could one do? returned Mason. Oh it was frightful! he added shuddering. And I did not expect it she looked so quiet at first. I warned you was his friend’s answer I said—be on your guard when you go near her. Besides you might have waited till to-morrow and had me with you it was mere folly to attempt the interview to-night and alone. I thought I could have done some good. You thought! you thought! Yes it makes me impatient to hear you but however you have suffered and are likely to suffer enough for not taking my advice so I’ll say no more. Carter—hurry!—hurry! The sun will soon rise and I must have him off. Directly sir the shoulder is just bandaged. I must look to this other wound in the arm she has had her teeth here too I think. She sucked the blood she said she’d drain my heart said Mason. I saw Mr Rochester shudder a singularly marked expression of disgust horror hatred warped his countenance almost to distortion but he only said— Come be silent Richard and never mind her gibberish don’t repeat it. I wish I could forget it was the answer. You will when you are out of the country when you get back to Spanish Town you may think of her as dead and buried—or rather you need not think of her at all. Impossible to forget this night! It is not impossible have some energy man. You thought you were as dead as a herring two hours since and you are all alive and talking now. There!—Carter has done with you or nearly so I’ll make you decent in a trice. Jane he turned to me for the first time since his re-entrance take this key go down into my bedroom and walk straight forward into my dressing-room open the top drawer of the wardrobe and take out a clean shirt and neck-handkerchief bring them here and be nimble. I went sought the repository he had mentioned found the articles named and returned with them. Now said he go to the other side of the bed while I order his toilet but don’t leave the room you may be wanted again. I retired as directed. Was anybody stirring below when you went down Jane? inquired Mr Rochester presently. No sir all was very still. We shall get you off cannily Dick and it will be better both for your sake and for that of the poor creature in yonder. I have striven long to avoid exposure and I should not like it to come at last. Here Carter help him on with his waist-coat. Where did you leave your furred cloak? You can’t travel a mile without that I know in this damned cold climate. In your room?—Jane run down to Mr Mason’s room—the one next mine—and fetch a cloak you will see there. Again I ran and again returned bearing an immense mantle lined and edged with fur. Now I’ve another errand for you said my untiring master you must away to my room again. What a mercy you are shod with velvet Jane!—a clod-hopping messenger would never do at this juncture. You must open the middle drawer of my toilet-table and take out a little phial and a little glass you will find there—quick! I flew thither and back bringing the desired vessels. That’s well! Now doctor I shall take the liberty of administering a dose myself on my own responsibility. I got this cordial at Rome of an Italian charlatan—a fellow you would have kicked Carter. It is not a thing to be used indiscriminately but it is good upon occasion as now for instance. Jane a little water. He held out the tiny glass and I half filled it from the water-bottle on the washstand. That will do—now wet the lip of the phial. I did so he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid and presented it to Mason. Drink Richard it will give you the heart you lack for an hour or so. But will it hurt me?—is it inflammatory? Drink! drink! drink! Mr Mason obeyed because it was evidently useless to resist. He was dressed now he still looked pale but he was no longer gory and sullied. Mr Rochester let him sit three minutes after he had swallowed the liquid he then took his arm— Now I am sure you can get on your feet he said—try. The patient rose. Carter take him under the other shoulder. Be of good cheer Richard step out—that’s it! I do feel better remarked Mr Mason. I am sure you do. Now Jane trip on before us away to the backstairs unbolt the side-passage door and tell the driver of the post-chaise you will see in the yard—or just outside for I told him not to drive his rattling wheels over the pavement—to be ready we are coming and Jane if any one is about come to the foot of the stairs and hem. It was by this time half-past five and the sun was on the point of rising but I found the kitchen still dark and silent. The side-passage door was fastened I opened it with as little noise as possible all the yard was quiet but the gates stood wide open and there was a post-chaise with horses ready harnessed and driver seated on the box stationed outside. I approached him and said the gentlemen were coming he nodded then I looked carefully round and listened. The stillness of early morning slumbered everywhere the curtains were yet drawn over the servants’ chamber windows little birds were just twittering in the blossom-blanched orchard trees whose boughs drooped like white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard the carriage horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables all else was still. The gentlemen now appeared. Mason supported by Mr Rochester and the surgeon seemed to walk with tolerable ease they assisted him into the chaise Carter followed. Take care of him said Mr Rochester to the latter and keep him at your house till he is quite well I shall ride over in a day or two to see how he gets on. Richard how is it with you? The fresh air revives me Fairfax. Leave the window open on his side Carter there is no wind—good-bye Dick. Fairfax— Well what is it? Let her be taken care of let her be treated as tenderly as may be let her— he stopped and burst into tears. I do my best and have done it and will do it was the answer he shut up the chaise door and the vehicle drove away. Yet would to God there was an end of all this! added Mr Rochester as he closed and barred the heavy yard-gates. This done he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a door in the wall bordering the orchard. I supposing he had done with me prepared to return to the house again however I heard him call Jane! He had opened the portal and stood at it waiting for me. Come where there is some freshness for a few moments he said that house is a mere dungeon don’t you feel it so? It seems to me a splendid mansion sir. The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes he answered and you see it through a charmed medium you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs that the marble is sordid slate and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now here he pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered all is real sweet and pure. He strayed down a walk edged with box with apple trees pear trees and cherry trees on one side and a border on the other full of all sorts of old-fashioned flowers stocks sweet-williams primroses pansies mingled with southernwood sweet-briar and various fragrant herbs. They were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams followed by a lovely spring morning could make them the sun was just entering the dappled east and his light illumined the wreathed and dewy orchard trees and shone down the quiet walks under them. Jane will you have a flower? He gathered a half-blown rose the first on the bush and offered it to me. Thank you sir. Do you like this sunrise Jane? That sky with its high and light clouds which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm—this placid and balmly atmosphere? I do very much. You have passed a strange night Jane. Yes sir. And it has made you look pale—were you afraid when I left you alone with Mason? I was afraid of some one coming out of the inner room. But I had fastened the door—I had the key in my pocket I should have been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb—my pet lamb—so near a wolf’s den unguarded you were safe. Will Grace Poole live here still sir? Oh yes! don’t trouble your head about her—put the thing out of your thoughts. Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays. Never fear—I will take care of myself. Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now sir? I cannot vouch for that till Mason is out of England nor even then. To live for me Jane is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spue fire any day. But Mr Mason seems a man easily led. Your influence sir is evidently potent with him he will never set you at defiance or wilfully injure you. Oh no! Mason will not defy me nor knowing it will he hurt me—but unintentionally he might in a moment by one careless word deprive me if not of life yet for ever of happiness. Tell him to be cautious sir let him know what you fear and show him how to avert the danger. He laughed sardonically hastily took my hand and as hastily threw it from him. If I could do that simpleton where would the danger be? Annihilated in a moment. Ever since I have known Mason I have only had to say to him ‘Do that’ and the thing has been done. But I cannot give him orders in this case I cannot say ‘Beware of harming me Richard’ for it is imperative that I should keep him ignorant that harm to me is possible. Now you look puzzled and I will puzzle you further. You are my little friend are you not? I like to serve you sir and to obey you in all that is right. Precisely I see you do. I see genuine contentment in your gait and mien your eye and face when you are helping me and pleasing me—working for me and with me in as you characteristically say ‘all that is right’ for if I bid you do what you thought wrong there would be no light-footed running no neat-handed alacrity no lively glance and animated complexion. My friend would then turn to me quiet and pale and would say ‘No sir that is impossible I cannot do it because it is wrong’ and would become immutable as a fixed star. Well you too have power over me and may injure me yet I dare not show you where I am vulnerable lest faithful and friendly as you are you should transfix me at once. If you have no more to fear from Mr Mason than you have from me sir you are very safe. God grant it may be so! Here Jane is an arbour sit down. The arbour was an arch in the wall lined with ivy it contained a rustic seat. Mr Rochester took it leaving room however for me but I stood before him. Sit he said the bench is long enough for two. You don’t hesitate to take a place at my side do you? Is that wrong Jane? I answered him by assuming it to refuse would I felt have been unwise. Now my little friend while the sun drinks the dew—while all the flowers in this old garden awake and expand and the birds fetch their young ones’ breakfast out of the Thornfield and the early bees do their first spell of work—I’ll put a case to you which you must endeavour to suppose your own but first look at me and tell me you are at ease and not fearing that I err in detaining you or that you err in staying. No sir I am content. Well then Jane call to aid your fancy—suppose you were no longer a girl well reared and disciplined but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards imagine yourself in a remote foreign land conceive that you there commit a capital error no matter of what nature or from what motives but one whose consequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence. Mind I don’t say a crime I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty act which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law my word is error. The results of what you have done become in time to you utterly insupportable you take measures to obtain relief unusual measures but neither unlawful nor culpable. Still you are miserable for hope has quitted you on the very confines of life your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse which you feel will not leave it till the time of setting. Bitter and base associations have become the sole food of your memory you wander here and there seeking rest in exile happiness in pleasure—I mean in heartless sensual pleasure—such as dulls intellect and blights feeling. Heart-weary and soul-withered you come home after years of voluntary banishment you make a new acquaintance—how or where no matter you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years and never before encountered and they are all fresh healthy without soil and without taint. Such society revives regenerates you feel better days come back—higher wishes purer feelings you desire to recommence your life and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom—a mere conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your judgment approves? He paused for an answer and what was I to say? Oh for some good spirit to suggest a judicious and satisfactory response! Vain aspiration! The west wind whispered in the ivy round me but no gentle Ariel borrowed its breath as a medium of speech the birds sang in the tree-tops but their song however sweet was inarticulate. Again Mr Rochester propounded his query Is the wandering and sinful but now rest-seeking and repentant man justified in daring the world’s opinion in order to attach to him for ever this gentle gracious genial stranger thereby securing his own peace of mind and regeneration of life? Sir I answered a wanderer’s repose or a sinner’s reformation should never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die philosophers falter in wisdom and Christians in goodness if any one you know has suffered and erred let him look higher than his equals for strength to amend and solace to heal. But the instrument—the instrument! God who does the work ordains the instrument. I have myself—I tell it you without parable—been a worldly dissipated restless man and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in— He paused the birds went on carolling the leaves lightly rustling. I almost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to catch the suspended revelation but they would have had to wait many minutes—so long was the silence protracted. At last I looked up at the tardy speaker he was looking eagerly at me. Little friend said he in quite a changed tone—while his face changed too losing all its softness and gravity and becoming harsh and sarcastic—you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram don’t you think if I married her she would regenerate me with a vengeance? He got up instantly went quite to the other end of the walk and when he came back he was humming a tune. Jane Jane said he stopping before me you are quite pale with your vigils don’t you curse me for disturbing your rest? Curse you? No sir. Shake hands in confirmation of the word. What cold fingers! They were warmer last night when I touched them at the door of the mysterious chamber. Jane when will you watch with me again? Whenever I can be useful sir. For instance the night before I am married! I am sure I shall not be able to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company? To you I can talk of my lovely one for now you have seen her and know her. Yes sir. She’s a rare one is she not Jane? Yes sir. A strapper—a real strapper Jane big brown and buxom with hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had. Bless me! there’s Dent and Lynn in the stables! Go in by the shrubbery through that wicket. As I went one way he went another and I heard him in the yard saying cheerfully— Mason got the start of you all this morning he was gone before sunrise I rose at four to see him off. ', 'Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies and so are signs and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies I believe exist for instance between far-distant long-absent wholly estranged relatives asserting notwithstanding their alienation the unity of the source to which each traces his origin whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs for aught we know may be but the sympathies of Nature with man. When I was a little girl only six years old I one night heard Bessie Leaven say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little child and that to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble either to one’s self or one’s kin. The saying might have worn out of my memory had not a circumstance immediately followed which served indelibly to fix it there. The next day Bessie was sent for home to the deathbed of her little sister. Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident for during the past week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not brought with it a dream of an infant which I sometimes hushed in my arms sometimes dandled on my knee sometimes watched playing with daisies on a lawn or again dabbling its hands in running water. It was a wailing child this night and a laughing one the next now it nestled close to me and now it ran from me but whatever mood the apparition evinced whatever aspect it wore it failed not for seven successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber. I did not like this iteration of one idea—this strange recurrence of one image and I grew nervous as bedtime approached and the hour of the vision drew near. It was from companionship with this baby-phantom I had been roused on that moonlight night when I heard the cry and it was on the afternoon of the day following I was summoned downstairs by a message that some one wanted me in Mrs Fairfax’s room. On repairing thither I found a man waiting for me having the appearance of a gentleman’s servant he was dressed in deep mourning and the hat he held in his hand was surrounded with a crape band. I daresay you hardly remember me Miss he said rising as I entered but my name is Leaven I lived coachman with Mrs Reed when you were at Gateshead eight or nine years since and I live there still. Oh Robert! how do you do? I remember you very well you used to give me a ride sometimes on Miss Georgiana’s bay pony. And how is Bessie? You are married to Bessie? Yes Miss my wife is very hearty thank you she brought me another little one about two months since—we have three now—and both mother and child are thriving. And are the family well at the house Robert? I am sorry I can’t give you better news of them Miss they are very badly at present—in great trouble. I hope no one is dead I said glancing at his black dress. He too looked down at the crape round his hat and replied— Mr John died yesterday was a week at his chambers in London. Mr John? Yes. And how does his mother bear it? Why you see Miss Eyre it is not a common mishap his life has been very wild these last three years he gave himself up to strange ways and his death was shocking. I heard from Bessie he was not doing well. Doing well! He could not do worse he ruined his health and his estate amongst the worst men and the worst women. He got into debt and into jail his mother helped him out twice but as soon as he was free he returned to his old companions and habits. His head was not strong the knaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard. He came down to Gateshead about three weeks ago and wanted missis to give up all to him. Missis refused her means have long been much reduced by his extravagance so he went back again and the next news was that he was dead. How he died God knows!—they say he killed himself. I was silent the tidings were frightful. Robert Leaven resumed— Missis had been out of health herself for some time she had got very stout but was not strong with it and the loss of money and fear of poverty were quite breaking her down. The information about Mr John’s death and the manner of it came too suddenly it brought on a stroke. She was three days without speaking but last Tuesday she seemed rather better she appeared as if she wanted to say something and kept making signs to my wife and mumbling. It was only yesterday morning however that Bessie understood she was pronouncing your name and at last she made out the words ‘Bring Jane—fetch Jane Eyre I want to speak to her.’ Bessie is not sure whether she is in her right mind or means anything by the words but she told Miss Reed and Miss Georgiana and advised them to send for you. The young ladies put it off at first but their mother grew so restless and said ‘Jane Jane’ so many times that at last they consented. I left Gateshead yesterday and if you can get ready Miss I should like to take you back with me early to-morrow morning. Yes Robert I shall be ready it seems to me that I ought to go. I think so too Miss. Bessie said she was sure you would not refuse but I suppose you will have to ask leave before you can get off? Yes and I will do it now and having directed him to the servants’ hall and recommended him to the care of John’s wife and the attentions of John himself I went in search of Mr Rochester. He was not in any of the lower rooms he was not in the yard the stables or the grounds. I asked Mrs Fairfax if she had seen him—yes she believed he was playing billiards with Miss Ingram. To the billiard-room I hastened the click of balls and the hum of voices resounded thence Mr Rochester Miss Ingram the two Misses Eshton and their admirers were all busied in the game. It required some courage to disturb so interesting a party my errand however was one I could not defer so I approached the master where he stood at Miss Ingram’s side. She turned as I drew near and looked at me haughtily her eyes seemed to demand What can the creeping creature want now? and when I said in a low voice Mr Rochester she made a movement as if tempted to order me away. I remember her appearance at the moment—it was very graceful and very striking she wore a morning robe of sky-blue crape a gauzy azure scarf was twisted in her hair. She had been all animation with the game and irritated pride did not lower the expression of her haughty lineaments. Does that person want you? she inquired of Mr Rochester and Mr Rochester turned to see who the person was. He made a curious grimace—one of his strange and equivocal demonstrations—threw down his cue and followed me from the room. Well Jane? he said as he rested his back against the schoolroom door which he had shut. If you please sir I want leave of absence for a week or two. What to do?—where to go? To see a sick lady who has sent for me. What sick lady?—where does she live? At Gateshead in ——shire. -shire? That is a hundred miles off! Who may she be that sends for people to see her that distance? Her name is Reed sir—Mrs Reed. Reed of Gateshead? There was a Reed of Gateshead a magistrate. It is his widow sir. And what have you to do with her? How do you know her? Mr Reed was my uncle—my mother’s brother. The deuce he was! You never told me that before you always said you had no relations. None that would own me sir. Mr Reed is dead and his wife cast me off. Why? Because I was poor and burdensome and she disliked me. But Reed left children?—you must have cousins? Sir George Lynn was talking of a Reed of Gateshead yesterday who he said was one of the veriest rascals on town and Ingram was mentioning a Georgiana Reed of the same place who was much admired for her beauty a season or two ago in London. John Reed is dead too sir he ruined himself and half-ruined his family and is supposed to have committed suicide. The news so shocked his mother that it brought on an apoplectic attack. And what good can you do her? Nonsense Jane! I would never think of running a hundred miles to see an old lady who will perhaps be dead before you reach her besides you say she cast you off. Yes sir but that is long ago and when her circumstances were very different I could not be easy to neglect her wishes now. How long will you stay? As short a time as possible sir. Promise me only to stay a week— I had better not pass my word I might be obliged to break it. At all events you will come back you will not be induced under any pretext to take up a permanent residence with her? Oh no! I shall certainly return if all be well. And who goes with you? You don’t travel a hundred miles alone. No sir she has sent her coachman. A person to be trusted? Yes sir he has lived ten years in the family. Mr Rochester meditated. When do you wish to go? Early to-morrow morning sir. Well you must have some money you can’t travel without money and I daresay you have not much I have given you no salary yet. How much have you in the world Jane? he asked smiling. I drew out my purse a meagre thing it was. Five shillings sir. He took the purse poured the hoard into his palm and chuckled over it as if its scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book Here said he offering me a note it was fifty pounds and he owed me but fifteen. I told him I had no change. I don’t want change you know that. Take your wages. I declined accepting more than was my due. He scowled at first then as if recollecting something he said— Right right! Better not give you all now you would perhaps stay away three months if you had fifty pounds. There are ten is it not plenty? Yes sir but now you owe me five. Come back for it then I am your banker for forty pounds. Mr Rochester I may as well mention another matter of business to you while I have the opportunity. Matter of business? I am curious to hear it. You have as good as informed me sir that you are going shortly to be married? Yes what then? In that case sir Adèle ought to go to school I am sure you will perceive the necessity of it. To get her out of my bride’s way who might otherwise walk over her rather too emphatically? There’s sense in the suggestion not a doubt of it. Adèle as you say must go to school and you of course must march straight to—the devil? I hope not sir but I must seek another situation somewhere. In course! he exclaimed with a twang of voice and a distortion of features equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes. And old Madam Reed or the Misses her daughters will be solicited by you to seek a place I suppose? No sir I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me in asking favours of them—but I shall advertise. You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt! he growled. At your peril you advertise! I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds Jane I’ve a use for it. And so have I sir I returned putting my hands and my purse behind me. I could not spare the money on any account. Little niggard! said he refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five pounds Jane. Not five shillings sir nor five pence. Just let me look at the cash. No sir you are not to be trusted. Jane! Sir? Promise me one thing. I’ll promise you anything sir that I think I am likely to perform. Not to advertise and to trust this quest of a situation to me. I’ll find you one in time. I shall be glad so to do sir if you in your turn will promise that I and Adèle shall be both safe out of the house before your bride enters it. Very well! very well! I’ll pledge my word on it. You go to-morrow then? Yes sir early. Shall you come down to the drawing-room after dinner? No sir I must prepare for the journey. Then you and I must bid good-bye for a little while? I suppose so sir. And how do people perform that ceremony of parting Jane? Teach me I’m not quite up to it. They say Farewell or any other form they prefer. Then say it. Farewell Mr Rochester for the present. What must I say? The same if you like sir. Farewell Miss Eyre for the present is that all? Yes. It seems stingy to my notions and dry and unfriendly. I should like something else a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands for instance but no—that would not content me either. So you’ll do no more than say Farewell Jane? It is enough sir as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many. Very likely but it is blank and cool—‘Farewell.’ How long is he going to stand with his back against that door? I asked myself I want to commence my packing. The dinner-bell rang and suddenly away he bolted without another syllable I saw him no more during the day and was off before he had risen in the morning. I reached the lodge at Gateshead about five o’clock in the afternoon of the first of May I stepped in there before going up to the hall. It was very clean and neat the ornamental windows were hung with little white curtains the floor was spotless the grate and fire-irons were burnished bright and the fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth nursing her last-born and Robert and his sister played quietly in a corner. Bless you!—I knew you would come! exclaimed Mrs Leaven as I entered. Yes Bessie said I after I had kissed her and I trust I am not too late. How is Mrs Reed?—Alive still I hope. Yes she is alive and more sensible and collected than she was. The doctor says she may linger a week or two yet but he hardly thinks she will finally recover. Has she mentioned me lately? She was talking of you only this morning and wishing you would come but she is sleeping now or was ten minutes ago when I was up at the house. She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon and wakes up about six or seven. Will you rest yourself here an hour Miss and then I will go up with you? Robert here entered and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle and went to welcome him afterwards she insisted on my taking off my bonnet and having some tea for she said I looked pale and tired. I was glad to accept her hospitality and I submitted to be relieved of my travelling garb just as passively as I used to let her undress me when a child. Old times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling about—setting out the tea-tray with her best china cutting bread and butter toasting a tea-cake and between whiles giving little Robert or Jane an occasional tap or push just as she used to give me in former days. Bessie had retained her quick temper as well as her light foot and good looks. Tea ready I was going to approach the table but she desired me to sit still quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served at the fireside she said and she placed before me a little round stand with my cup and a plate of toast absolutely as she used to accommodate me with some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair and I smiled and obeyed her as in bygone days. She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall and what sort of a person the mistress was and when I told her there was only a master whether he was a nice gentleman and if I liked him. I told her he was rather an ugly man but quite a gentleman and that he treated me kindly and I was content. Then I went on to describe to her the gay company that had lately been staying at the house and to these details Bessie listened with interest they were precisely of the kind she relished. In such conversation an hour was soon gone Bessie restored to me my bonnet &c. and accompanied by her I quitted the lodge for the hall. It was also accompanied by her that I had nearly nine years ago walked down the path I was now ascending. On a dark misty raw morning in January I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart—a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation—to seek the chilly harbourage of Lowood that bourne so far away and unexplored. The same hostile roof now again rose before me my prospects were doubtful yet and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs too was now quite healed and the flame of resentment extinguished. You shall go into the breakfast-room first said Bessie as she preceded me through the hall the young ladies will be there. In another moment I was within that apartment. There was every article of furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first introduced to Mr Brocklehurst the very rug he had stood upon still covered the hearth. Glancing at the bookcases I thought I could distinguish the two volumes of Bewick’s British Birds occupying their old place on the third shelf and Gulliver’s Travels and the Arabian Nights ranged just above. The inanimate objects were not changed but the living things had altered past recognition. Two young ladies appeared before me one very tall almost as tall as Miss Ingram—very thin too with a sallow face and severe mien. There was something ascetic in her look which was augmented by the extreme plainness of a straight-skirted black stuff dress a starched linen collar hair combed away from the temples and the nun-like ornament of a string of ebony beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza though I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and colourless visage. The other was as certainly Georgiana but not the Georgiana I remembered—the slim and fairy-like girl of eleven. This was a full-blown very plump damsel fair as waxwork with handsome and regular features languishing blue eyes and ringleted yellow hair. The hue of her dress was black too but its fashion was so different from her sister’s—so much more flowing and becoming—it looked as stylish as the other’s looked puritanical. In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother—and only one the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent’s Cairngorm eye the blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin—perhaps a little softened but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom. Both ladies as I advanced rose to welcome me and both addressed me by the name of Miss Eyre. Eliza’s greeting was delivered in a short abrupt voice without a smile and then she sat down again fixed her eyes on the fire and seemed to forget me. Georgiana added to her How d’ye do? several commonplaces about my journey the weather and so on uttered in rather a drawling tone and accompanied by sundry side-glances that measured me from head to foot—now traversing the folds of my drab merino pelisse and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they think you a quiz without actually saying the words. A certain superciliousness of look coolness of manner nonchalance of tone express fully their sentiments on the point without committing them by any positive rudeness in word or deed. A sneer however whether covert or open had now no longer that power over me it once possessed as I sat between my cousins I was surprised to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi-sarcastic attentions of the other—Eliza did not mortify nor Georgiana ruffle me. The fact was I had other things to think about within the last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could raise—pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite had been excited than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow—that their airs gave me no concern either for good or bad. How is Mrs Reed? I asked soon looking calmly at Georgiana who thought fit to bridle at the direct address as if it were an unexpected liberty. Mrs Reed? Ah! mama you mean she is extremely poorly I doubt if you can see her to-night. If said I you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come I should be much obliged to you. Georgiana almost started and she opened her blue eyes wild and wide. I know she had a particular wish to see me I added and I would not defer attending to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary. Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening remarked Eliza. I soon rose quietly took off my bonnet and gloves uninvited and said I would just step out to Bessie—who was I dared say in the kitchen—and ask her to ascertain whether Mrs Reed was disposed to receive me or not to-night. I went and having found Bessie and despatched her on my errand I proceeded to take further measures. It had heretofore been my habit always to shrink from arrogance received as I had been to-day I should a year ago have resolved to quit Gateshead the very next morning now it was disclosed to me all at once that that would be a foolish plan. I had taken a journey of a hundred miles to see my aunt and I must stay with her till she was better—or dead as to her daughters’ pride or folly I must put it on one side make myself independent of it. So I addressed the housekeeper asked her to show me a room told her I should probably be a visitor here for a week or two had my trunk conveyed to my chamber and followed it thither myself I met Bessie on the landing. Missis is awake said she I have told her you are here come and let us see if she will know you. I did not need to be guided to the well-known room to which I had so often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I hastened before Bessie I softly opened the door a shaded light stood on the table for it was now getting dark. There was the great four-post bed with amber hangings as of old there the toilet-table the armchair and the footstool at which I had a hundred times been sentenced to kneel to ask pardon for offences by me uncommitted. I looked into a certain corner near half-expecting to see the slim outline of a once dreaded switch which used to lurk there waiting to leap out imp-like and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I approached the bed I opened the curtains and leant over the high-piled pillows. Well did I remember Mrs Reed’s face and I eagerly sought the familiar image. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in bitterness and hate and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries—to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity. The well-known face was there stern relentless as ever—there was that peculiar eye which nothing could melt and the somewhat raised imperious despotic eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me menace and hate! and how the recollection of childhood’s terrors and sorrows revived as I traced its harsh line now! And yet I stooped down and kissed her she looked at me. Is this Jane Eyre? she said. Yes Aunt Reed. How are you dear aunt? I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again I thought it no sin to forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her hand which lay outside the sheet had she pressed mine kindly I should at that moment have experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable natures are not so soon softened nor are natural antipathies so readily eradicated. Mrs Reed took her hand away and turning her face rather from me she remarked that the night was warm. Again she regarded me so icily I felt at once that her opinion of me—her feeling towards me—was unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony eye—opaque to tenderness indissoluble to tears—that she was resolved to consider me bad to the last because to believe me good would give her no generous pleasure only a sense of mortification. I felt pain and then I felt ire and then I felt a determination to subdue her—to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will. My tears had risen just as in childhood I ordered them back to their source. I brought a chair to the bed-head I sat down and leaned over the pillow. You sent for me I said and I am here and it is my intention to stay till I see how you get on. Oh of course! You have seen my daughters? Yes. Well you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things over with you I have on my mind to-night it is too late and I have a difficulty in recalling them. But there was something I wished to say—let me see— The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken place in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly she drew the bedclothes round her my elbow resting on a corner of the quilt fixed it down she was at once irritated. Sit up! said she don’t annoy me with holding the clothes fast. Are you Jane Eyre? I am Jane Eyre. I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe. Such a burden to be left on my hands—and so much annoyance as she caused me daily and hourly with her incomprehensible disposition and her sudden starts of temper and her continual unnatural watchings of one’s movements! I declare she talked to me once like something mad or like a fiend—no child ever spoke or looked as she did I was glad to get her away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The fever broke out there and many of the pupils died. She however did not die but I said she did—I wish she had died! A strange wish Mrs Reed why do you hate her so? I had a dislike to her mother always for she was my husband’s only sister and a great favourite with him he opposed the family’s disowning her when she made her low marriage and when news came of her death he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby though I entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it—a sickly whining pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night long—not screaming heartily like any other child but whimpering and moaning. Reed pitied it and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had been his own more indeed than he ever noticed his own at that age. He would try to make my children friendly to the little beggar the darlings could not bear it and he was angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last illness he had it brought continually to his bedside and but an hour before he died he bound me by vow to keep the creature. I would as soon have been charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse but he was weak naturally weak. John does not at all resemble his father and I am glad of it John is like me and like my brothers—he is quite a Gibson. Oh I wish he would cease tormenting me with letters for money! I have no more money to give him we are getting poor. I must send away half the servants and shut up part of the house or let it off. I can never submit to do that—yet how are we to get on? Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully and always loses—poor boy! He is beset by sharpers John is sunk and degraded—his look is frightful—I feel ashamed for him when I see him. She was getting much excited. I think I had better leave her now said I to Bessie who stood on the other side of the bed. Perhaps you had Miss but she often talks in this way towards night—in the morning she is calmer. I rose. Stop! exclaimed Mrs Reed there is another thing I wished to say. He threatens me—he continually threatens me with his own death or mine and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in his throat or with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to a strange pass I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How is the money to be had? Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught she succeeded with difficulty. Soon after Mrs Reed grew more composed and sank into a dozing state. I then left her. More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with her. She continued either delirious or lethargic and the doctor forbade everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime I got on as well as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold indeed at first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing reading or writing and scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister. Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour and take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for occupation or amusement I had brought my drawing materials with me and they served me for both. Provided with a case of pencils and some sheets of paper I used to take a seat apart from them near the window and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination a glimpse of sea between two rocks the rising moon and a ship crossing its disk a group of reeds and water-flags and a naiad’s head crowned with lotus-flowers rising out of them an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow’s nest under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom. One morning I fell to sketching a face what sort of a face it was to be I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil gave it a broad point and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage that contour gave me pleasure my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with features. Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that brow then followed naturally a well-defined nose with a straight ridge and full nostrils then a flexible-looking mouth by no means narrow then a firm chin with a decided cleft down the middle of it of course some black whiskers were wanted and some jetty hair tufted on the temples and waved above the forehead. Now for the eyes I had left them to the last because they required the most careful working. I drew them large I shaped them well the eyelashes I traced long and sombre the irids lustrous and large. Good! but not quite the thing I thought as I surveyed the effect they want more force and spirit and I wrought the shades blacker that the lights might flash more brilliantly—a happy touch or two secured success. There I had a friend’s face under my gaze and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs on me? I looked at it I smiled at the speaking likeness I was absorbed and content. Is that a portrait of some one you know? asked Eliza who had approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course I lied it was in fact a very faithful representation of Mr Rochester. But what was that to her or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced to look. The other drawings pleased her much but she called that an ugly man. They both seemed surprised at my skill. I offered to sketch their portraits and each in turn sat for a pencil outline. Then Georgiana produced her album. I promised to contribute a water-colour drawing this put her at once into good humour. She proposed a walk in the grounds. Before we had been out two hours we were deep in a confidential conversation she had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter she had spent in London two seasons ago—of the admiration she had there excited—the attention she had received and I even got hints of the titled conquest she had made. In the course of the afternoon and evening these hints were enlarged on various soft conversations were reported and sentimental scenes represented and in short a volume of a novel of fashionable life was that day improvised by her for my benefit. The communications were renewed from day to day they always ran on the same theme—herself her loves and woes. It was strange she never once adverted either to her mother’s illness or her brother’s death or the present gloomy state of the family prospects. Her mind seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety and aspirations after dissipations to come. She passed about five minutes each day in her mother’s sick-room and no more. Eliza still spoke little she had evidently no time to talk. I never saw a busier person than she seemed to be yet it was difficult to say what she did or rather to discover any result of her diligence. She had an alarm to call her up early. I know not how she occupied herself before breakfast but after that meal she divided her time into regular portions and each hour had its allotted task. Three times a day she studied a little book which I found on inspection was a Common Prayer Book. I asked her once what was the great attraction of that volume and she said the Rubric. Three hours she gave to stitching with gold thread the border of a square crimson cloth almost large enough for a carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this article she informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new church lately erected near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her diary two to working by herself in the kitchen-garden and one to the regulation of her accounts. She seemed to want no company no conversation. I believe she was happy in her way this routine sufficed for her and nothing annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any incident which forced her to vary its clockwork regularity. She told me one evening when more disposed to be communicative than usual that John’s conduct and the threatened ruin of the family had been a source of profound affliction to her but she had now she said settled her mind and formed her resolution. Her own fortune she had taken care to secure and when her mother died—and it was wholly improbable she tranquilly remarked that she should either recover or linger long—she would execute a long-cherished project seek a retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured from disturbance and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her. Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common they never had had. She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration. Georgiana should take her own course and she Eliza would take hers. Georgiana when not unburdening her heart to me spent most of her time in lying on the sofa fretting about the dulness of the house and wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an invitation up to town. It would be so much better she said if she could only get out of the way for a month or two till all was over. I did not ask what she meant by all being over but I suppose she referred to the expected decease of her mother and the gloomy sequel of funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of her sister’s indolence and complaints than if no such murmuring lounging object had been before her. One day however as she put away her account-book and unfolded her embroidery she suddenly took her up thus— Georgiana a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born for you make no use of life. Instead of living for in and with yourself as a reasonable being ought you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person’s strength if no one can be found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat weak puffy useless thing you cry out that you are ill-treated neglected miserable. Then too existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement or else the world is a dungeon you must be admired you must be courted you must be flattered—you must have music dancing and society—or you languish you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent of all efforts and all wills but your own? Take one day share it into sections to each section apportion its task leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour ten minutes five minutes—include all do each piece of business in its turn with method with rigid regularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment you have had to seek no one’s company conversation sympathy forbearance you have lived in short as an independent being ought to do. Take this advice the first and last I shall offer you then you will not want me or any one else happen what may. Neglect it—go on as heretofore craving whining and idling—and suffer the results of your idiocy however bad and insufferable they may be. I tell you this plainly and listen for though I shall no more repeat what I am now about to say I shall steadily act on it. After my mother’s death I wash my hands of you from the day her coffin is carried to the vault in Gateshead Church you and I will be as separate as if we had never known each other. You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim I can tell you this—if the whole human race ourselves excepted were swept away and we two stood alone on the earth I would leave you in the old world and betake myself to the new. She closed her lips. You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade answered Georgiana. Everybody knows you are the most selfish heartless creature in existence and I know your spiteful hatred towards me I have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about Lord Edwin Vere you could not bear me to be raised above you to have a title to be received into circles where you dare not show your face and so you acted the spy and informer and ruined my prospects for ever. Georgiana took out her handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour afterwards Eliza sat cold impassable and assiduously industrious. True generous feeling is made small account of by some but here were two natures rendered the one intolerably acrid the other despicably savourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition. It was a wet and windy afternoon Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa over the perusal of a novel Eliza was gone to attend a saint’s-day service at the new church—for in matters of religion she was a rigid formalist no weather ever prevented the punctual discharge of what she considered her devotional duties fair or foul she went to church thrice every Sunday and as often on week-days as there were prayers. I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped who lay there almost unheeded the very servants paid her but a remittent attention the hired nurse being little looked after would slip out of the room whenever she could. Bessie was faithful but she had her own family to mind and could only come occasionally to the hall. I found the sick-room unwatched as I had expected no nurse was there the patient lay still and seemingly lethargic her livid face sunk in the pillows the fire was dying in the grate. I renewed the fuel re-arranged the bedclothes gazed awhile on her who could not now gaze on me and then I moved away to the window. The rain beat strongly against the panes the wind blew tempestuously One lies there I thought who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements. Whither will that spirit—now struggling to quit its material tenement—flit when at length released? In pondering the great mystery I thought of Helen Burns recalled her dying words—her faith—her doctrine of the equality of disembodied souls. I was still listening in thought to her well-remembered tones—still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect her wasted face and sublime gaze as she lay on her placid deathbed and whispered her longing to be restored to her divine Father’s bosom—when a feeble voice murmured from the couch behind Who is that? I knew Mrs Reed had not spoken for days was she reviving? I went up to her. It is I Aunt Reed. Who—I? was her answer. Who are you? looking at me with surprise and a sort of alarm but still not wildly. You are quite a stranger to me—where is Bessie? She is at the lodge aunt. Aunt she repeated. Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the Gibsons and yet I know you—that face and the eyes and forehead are quiet familiar to me you are like—why you are like Jane Eyre! I said nothing I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my identity. Yet said she I am afraid it is a mistake my thoughts deceive me. I wished to see Jane Eyre and I fancy a likeness where none exists besides in eight years she must be so changed. I now gently assured her that I was the person she supposed and desired me to be and seeing that I was understood and that her senses were quite collected I explained how Bessie had sent her husband to fetch me from Thornfield. I am very ill I know she said ere long. I was trying to turn myself a few minutes since and find I cannot move a limb. It is as well I should ease my mind before I die what we think little of in health burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me. Is the nurse here? or is there no one in the room but you? I assured her we were alone. Well I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was in breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own child the other— she stopped. After all it is of no great importance perhaps she murmured to herself and then I may get better and to humble myself so to her is painful. She made an effort to alter her position but failed her face changed she seemed to experience some inward sensation—the precursor perhaps of the last pang. Well I must get it over. Eternity is before me I had better tell her.—Go to my dressing-case open it and take out a letter you will see there. I obeyed her directions. Read the letter she said. It was short and thus conceived— MADAM— Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my niece Jane Eyre and to tell me how she is? It is my intention to write shortly and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence has blessed my endeavours to secure a competency and as I am unmarried and childless I wish to adopt her during my life and bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave. I am Madam &c. &c. JOHN EYRE Madeira. It was dated three years back. Why did I never hear of this? I asked. Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me Jane—the fury with which you once turned on me the tone in which you declared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the world the unchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that the very thought of me made you sick and asserted that I had treated you with miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind I felt fear as if an animal that I had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and cursed me in a man’s voice.—Bring me some water! Oh make haste! Dear Mrs Reed said I as I offered her the draught she required think no more of all this let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me for my passionate language I was a child then eight nine years have passed since that day. She heeded nothing of what I said but when she had tasted the water and drawn breath she went on thus— I tell you I could not forget it and I took my revenge for you to be adopted by your uncle and placed in a state of ease and comfort was what I could not endure. I wrote to him I said I was sorry for his disappointment but Jane Eyre was dead she had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please write and contradict my assertion—expose my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born I think to be my torment my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which but for you I should never have been tempted to commit. If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it aunt and to regard me with kindness and forgiveness—— You have a very bad disposition said she and one to this day I feel it impossible to understand how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent under any treatment and in the tenth break out all fire and violence I can never comprehend. My disposition is not so bad as you think I am passionate but not vindictive. Many a time as a little child I should have been glad to love you if you would have let me and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now kiss me aunt. I approached my cheek to her lips she would not touch it. She said I oppressed her by leaning over the bed and again demanded water. As I laid her down—for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she drank—I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine the feeble fingers shrank from my touch—the glazing eyes shunned my gaze. Love me then or hate me as you will I said at last you have my full and free forgiveness ask now for God’s and be at peace. Poor suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort to change her habitual frame of mind living she had ever hated me—dying she must hate me still. The nurse now entered and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half-an-hour longer hoping to see some sign of amity but she gave none. She was fast relapsing into stupor nor did her mind again rally at twelve o’clock that night she died. I was not present to close her eyes nor were either of her daughters. They came to tell us the next morning that all was over. She was by that time laid out. Eliza and I went to look at her Georgiana who had burst out into loud weeping said she dared not go. There was stretched Sarah Reed’s once robust and active frame rigid and still her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid her brow and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul. A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with gloom and pain nothing soft nothing sweet nothing pitying or hopeful or subduing did it inspire only a grating anguish for her woes—not my loss—and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a form. Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some minutes she observed— With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age her life was shortened by trouble. And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an instant as it passed away she turned and left the room and so did I. Neither of us had dropt a tear. ', 'Mr Rochester had given me but one week’s leave of absence yet a month elapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave immediately after the funeral but Georgiana entreated me to stay till she could get off to London whither she was now at last invited by her uncle Mr Gibson who had come down to direct his sister’s interment and settle the family affairs. Georgiana said she dreaded being left alone with Eliza from her she got neither sympathy in her dejection support in her fears nor aid in her preparations so I bore with her feeble-minded wailings and selfish lamentations as well as I could and did my best in sewing for her and packing her dresses. It is true that while I worked she would idle and I thought to myself If you and I were destined to live always together cousin we would commence matters on a different footing. I should not settle tamely down into being the forbearing party I should assign you your share of labour and compel you to accomplish it or else it should be left undone I should insist also on your keeping some of those drawling half-insincere complaints hushed in your own breast. It is only because our connection happens to be very transitory and comes at a peculiarly mournful season that I consent thus to render it so patient and compliant on my part. At last I saw Georgiana off but now it was Eliza’s turn to request me to stay another week. Her plans required all her time and attention she said she was about to depart for some unknown bourne and all day long she stayed in her own room her door bolted within filling trunks emptying drawers burning papers and holding no communication with any one. She wished me to look after the house to see callers and answer notes of condolence. One morning she told me I was at liberty. And she added I am obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct! There is some difference between living with such an one as you and with Georgiana you perform your own part in life and burden no one. To-morrow she continued I set out for the Continent. I shall take up my abode in a religious house near Lisle—a nunnery you would call it there I shall be quiet and unmolested. I shall devote myself for a time to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas and to a careful study of the workings of their system if I find it to be as I half suspect it is the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently and in order I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the veil. I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to dissuade her from it. The vocation will fit you to a hair I thought much good may it do you! When we parted she said Good-bye cousin Jane Eyre I wish you well you have some sense. I then returned You are not without sense cousin Eliza but what you have I suppose in another year will be walled up alive in a French convent. However it is not my business and so it suits you I don’t much care. You are in the right said she and with these words we each went our separate way. As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or her sister again I may as well mention here that Georgiana made an advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion and that Eliza actually took the veil and is at this day superior of the convent where she passed the period of her novitiate and which she endowed with her fortune. How people feel when they are returning home from an absence long or short I did not know I had never experienced the sensation. I had known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long walk to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy and later what it was to come back from church to Lowood to long for a plenteous meal and a good fire and to be unable to get either. Neither of these returnings was very pleasant or desirable no magnet drew me to a given point increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The return to Thornfield was yet to be tried. My journey seemed tedious—very tedious fifty miles one day a night spent at an inn fifty miles the next day. During the first twelve hours I thought of Mrs Reed in her last moments I saw her disfigured and discoloured face and heard her strangely altered voice. I mused on the funeral day the coffin the hearse the black train of tenants and servants—few was the number of relatives—the gaping vault the silent church the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana I beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room the other the inmate of a convent cell and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person and character. The evening arrival at the great town of —— scattered these thoughts night gave them quite another turn laid down on my traveller’s bed I left reminiscence for anticipation. I was going back to Thornfield but how long was I to stay there? Not long of that I was sure. I had heard from Mrs Fairfax in the interim of my absence the party at the hall was dispersed Mr Rochester had left for London three weeks ago but he was then expected to return in a fortnight. Mrs Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make arrangements for his wedding as he had talked of purchasing a new carriage she said the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram still seemed strange to her but from what everybody said and from what she had herself seen she could no longer doubt that the event would shortly take place. You would be strangely incredulous if you did doubt it was my mental comment. I don’t doubt it. The question followed Where was I to go? I dreamt of Miss Ingram all the night in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing the gates of Thornfield against me and pointing me out another road and Mr Rochester looked on with his arms folded—smiling sardonically as it seemed at both her and me. I had not notified to Mrs Fairfax the exact day of my return for I did not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Millcote. I proposed to walk the distance quietly by myself and very quietly after leaving my box in the ostler’s care did I slip away from the George Inn about six o’clock of a June evening and take the old road to Thornfield a road which lay chiefly through fields and was now little frequented. It was not a bright or splendid summer evening though fair and soft the haymakers were at work all along the road and the sky though far from cloudless was such as promised well for the future its blue—where blue was visible—was mild and settled and its cloud strata high and thin. The west too was warm no watery gleam chilled it—it seemed as if there was a fire lit an altar burning behind its screen of marbled vapour and out of apertures shone a golden redness. I felt glad as the road shortened before me so glad that I stopped once to ask myself what that joy meant and to remind reason that it was not to my home I was going or to a permanent resting-place or to a place where fond friends looked out for me and waited my arrival. Mrs Fairfax will smile you a calm welcome to be sure said I and little Adèle will clap her hands and jump to see you but you know very well you are thinking of another than they and that he is not thinking of you. But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience? These affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege of again looking on Mr Rochester whether he looked on me or not and they added—Hasten! hasten! be with him while you may but a few more days or weeks at most and you are parted from him for ever! And then I strangled a new-born agony—a deformed thing which I could not persuade myself to own and rear—and ran on. They are making hay too in Thornfield meadows or rather the labourers are just quitting their work and returning home with their rakes on their shoulders now at the hour I arrive. I have but a field or two to traverse and then I shall cross the road and reach the gates. How full the hedges are of roses! But I have no time to gather any I want to be at the house. I passed a tall briar shooting leafy and flowery branches across the path I see the narrow stile with stone steps and I see—Mr Rochester sitting there a book and a pencil in his hand he is writing. Well he is not a ghost yet every nerve I have is unstrung for a moment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I should tremble in this way when I saw him or lose my voice or the power of motion in his presence. I will go back as soon as I can stir I need not make an absolute fool of myself. I know another way to the house. It does not signify if I knew twenty ways for he has seen me. Hillo! he cries and he puts up his book and his pencil. There you are! Come on if you please. I suppose I do come on though in what fashion I know not being scarcely cognisant of my movements and solicitous only to appear calm and above all to control the working muscles of my face—which I feel rebel insolently against my will and struggle to express what I had resolved to conceal. But I have a veil—it is down I may make shift yet to behave with decent composure. And this is Jane Eyre? Are you coming from Millcote and on foot? Yes—just one of your tricks not to send for a carriage and come clattering over street and road like a common mortal but to steal into the vicinage of your home along with twilight just as if you were a dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last month? I have been with my aunt sir who is dead. A true Janian reply! Good angels be my guard! She comes from the other world—from the abode of people who are dead and tells me so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming! If I dared I’d touch you to see if you are substance or shadow you elf!—but I’d as soon offer to take hold of a blue ignis fatuus light in a marsh. Truant! truant! he added when he had paused an instant. Absent from me a whole month and forgetting me quite I’ll be sworn! I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again even though broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my master and by the knowledge that I was nothing to him but there was ever in Mr Rochester so at least I thought such a wealth of the power of communicating happiness that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered to stray and stranger birds like me was to feast genially. His last words were balm they seemed to imply that it imported something to him whether I forgot him or not. And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home—would that it were my home! He did not leave the stile and I hardly liked to ask to go by. I inquired soon if he had not been to London. Yes I suppose you found that out by second-sight. Mrs Fairfax told me in a letter. And did she inform you what I went to do? Oh yes sir! Everybody knew your errand. You must see the carriage Jane and tell me if you don’t think it will suit Mrs Rochester exactly and whether she won’t look like Queen Boadicea leaning back against those purple cushions. I wish Jane I were a trifle better adapted to match with her externally. Tell me now fairy as you are—can’t you give me a charm or a philter or something of that sort to make me a handsome man? It would be past the power of magic sir and in thought I added A loving eye is all the charm needed to such you are handsome enough or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty. Mr Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible in the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think it too good for common purposes it was the real sunshine of feeling—he shed it over me now. Pass Janet said he making room for me to cross the stile go up home and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend’s threshold. All I had now to do was to obey him in silence no need for me to colloquise further. I got over the stile without a word and meant to leave him calmly. An impulse held me fast—a force turned me round. I said—or something in me said for me and in spite of me— Thank you Mr Rochester for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you and wherever you are is my home—my only home. I walked on so fast that even he could hardly have overtaken me had he tried. Little Adèle was half wild with delight when she saw me. Mrs Fairfax received me with her usual plain friendliness. Leah smiled and even Sophie bid me bon soir with glee. This was very pleasant there is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort. I that evening shut my eyes resolutely against the future I stopped my ears against the voice that kept warning me of near separation and coming grief. When tea was over and Mrs Fairfax had taken her knitting and I had assumed a low seat near her and Adèle kneeling on the carpet had nestled close up to me and a sense of mutual affection seemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace I uttered a silent prayer that we might not be parted far or soon but when as we thus sat Mr Rochester entered unannounced and looking at us seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle of a group so amicable—when he said he supposed the old lady was all right now that she had got her adopted daughter back again and added that he saw Adèle was prête à croquer sa petite maman Anglaise—I half ventured to hope that he would even after his marriage keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his protection and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence. A fortnight of dubious calm succeeded my return to Thornfield Hall. Nothing was said of the master’s marriage and I saw no preparation going on for such an event. Almost every day I asked Mrs Fairfax if she had yet heard anything decided her answer was always in the negative. Once she said she had actually put the question to Mr Rochester as to when he was going to bring his bride home but he had answered her only by a joke and one of his queer looks and she could not tell what to make of him. One thing specially surprised me and that was there were no journeyings backward and forward no visits to Ingram Park to be sure it was twenty miles off on the borders of another county but what was that distance to an ardent lover? To so practised and indefatigable a horseman as Mr Rochester it would be but a morning’s ride. I began to cherish hopes I had no right to conceive that the match was broken off that rumour had been mistaken that one or both parties had changed their minds. I used to look at my master’s face to see if it were sad or fierce but I could not remember the time when it had been so uniformly clear of clouds or evil feelings. If in the moments I and my pupil spent with him I lacked spirits and sank into inevitable dejection he became even gay. Never had he called me more frequently to his presence never been kinder to me when there—and alas! never had I loved him so well. ', 'A splendid Midsummer shone over England skies so pure suns so radiant as were then seen in long succession seldom favour even singly our wave-girt land. It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the South like a flock of glorious passenger birds and lighted to rest them on the cliffs of Albion. The hay was all got in the fields round Thornfield were green and shorn the roads white and baked the trees were in their dark prime hedge and wood full-leaved and deeply tinted contrasted well with the sunny hue of the cleared meadows between. On Midsummer-eve Adèle weary with gathering wild strawberries in Hay Lane half the day had gone to bed with the sun. I watched her drop asleep and when I left her I sought the garden. It was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four—Day its fervid fires had wasted and dew fell cool on panting plain and scorched summit. Where the sun had gone down in simple state—pure of the pomp of clouds—spread a solemn purple burning with the light of red jewel and furnace flame at one point on one hill-peak and extending high and wide soft and still softer over half heaven. The east had its own charm or fine deep blue and its own modest gem a rising and solitary star soon it would boast the moon but she was yet beneath the horizon. I walked a while on the pavement but a subtle well-known scent—that of a cigar—stole from some window I saw the library casement open a handbreadth I knew I might be watched thence so I went apart into the orchard. No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like it was full of trees it bloomed with flowers a very high wall shut it out from the court on one side on the other a beech avenue screened it from the lawn. At the bottom was a sunk fence its sole separation from lonely fields a winding walk bordered with laurels and terminating in a giant horse-chestnut circled at the base by a seat led down to the fence. Here one could wander unseen. While such honey-dew fell such silence reigned such gloaming gathered I felt as if I could haunt such shade for ever but in threading the flower and fruit parterres at the upper part of the enclosure enticed there by the light the now rising moon cast on this more open quarter my step is stayed—not by sound not by sight but once more by a warning fragrance. Sweet-briar and southernwood jasmine pink and rose have long been yielding their evening sacrifice of incense this new scent is neither of shrub nor flower it is—I know it well—it is Mr Rochester’s cigar. I look round and I listen. I see trees laden with ripening fruit. I hear a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off no moving form is visible no coming step audible but that perfume increases I must flee. I make for the wicket leading to the shrubbery and I see Mr Rochester entering. I step aside into the ivy recess he will not stay long he will soon return whence he came and if I sit still he will never see me. But no—eventide is as pleasant to him as to me and this antique garden as attractive and he strolls on now lifting the gooseberry-tree branches to look at the fruit large as plums with which they are laden now taking a ripe cherry from the wall now stooping towards a knot of flowers either to inhale their fragrance or to admire the dew-beads on their petals. A great moth goes humming by me it alights on a plant at Mr Rochester’s foot he sees it and bends to examine it. Now he has his back towards me thought I and he is occupied too perhaps if I walk softly I can slip away unnoticed. I trode on an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel might not betray me he was standing among the beds at a yard or two distant from where I had to pass the moth apparently engaged him. I shall get by very well I meditated. As I crossed his shadow thrown long over the garden by the moon not yet risen high he said quietly without turning— Jane come and look at this fellow. I had made no noise he had not eyes behind—could his shadow feel? I started at first and then I approached him. Look at his wings said he he reminds me rather of a West Indian insect one does not often see so large and gay a night-rover in England there! he is flown. The moth roamed away. I was sheepishly retreating also but Mr Rochester followed me and when we reached the wicket he said— Turn back on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the house and surely no one can wish to go to bed while sunset is thus at meeting with moonrise. It is one of my faults that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse and always the lapse occurs at some crisis when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr Rochester in the shadowy orchard but I could not find a reason to allege for leaving him. I followed with lagging step and thoughts busily bent on discovering a means of extrication but he himself looked so composed and so grave also I became ashamed of feeling any confusion the evil—if evil existent or prospective there was—seemed to lie with me only his mind was unconscious and quiet. Jane he recommenced as we entered the laurel walk and slowly strayed down in the direction of the sunk fence and the horse-chestnut Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer is it not? Yes sir. You must have become in some degree attached to the house—you who have an eye for natural beauties and a good deal of the organ of Adhesiveness? I am attached to it indeed. And though I don’t comprehend how it is I perceive you have acquired a degree of regard for that foolish little child Adèle too and even for simple dame Fairfax? Yes sir in different ways I have an affection for both. And would be sorry to part with them? Yes. Pity! he said and sighed and paused. It is always the way of events in this life he continued presently no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting-place than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on for the hour of repose is expired. Must I move on sir? I asked. Must I leave Thornfield? I believe you must Jane. I am sorry Janet but I believe indeed you must. This was a blow but I did not let it prostrate me. Well sir I shall be ready when the order to march comes. It is come now—I must give it to-night. Then you are going to be married sir? Ex-act-ly—pre-cise-ly with your usual acuteness you have hit the nail straight on the head. Soon sir? Very soon my—that is Miss Eyre and you’ll remember Jane the first time I or Rumour plainly intimated to you that it was my intention to put my old bachelor’s neck into the sacred noose to enter into the holy estate of matrimony—to take Miss Ingram to my bosom in short she’s an extensive armful but that’s not to the point—one can’t have too much of such a very excellent thing as my beautiful Blanche well as I was saying—listen to me Jane! You’re not turning your head to look after more moths are you? That was only a lady-clock child ‘flying away home.’ I wish to remind you that it was you who first said to me with that discretion I respect in you—with that foresight prudence and humility which befit your responsible and dependent position—that in case I married Miss Ingram both you and little Adèle had better trot forthwith. I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in this suggestion on the character of my beloved indeed when you are far away Janet I’ll try to forget it I shall notice only its wisdom which is such that I have made it my law of action. Adèle must go to school and you Miss Eyre must get a new situation. Yes sir I will advertise immediately and meantime I suppose— I was going to say I suppose I may stay here till I find another shelter to betake myself to but I stopped feeling it would not do to risk a long sentence for my voice was not quite under command. In about a month I hope to be a bridegroom continued Mr Rochester and in the interim I shall myself look out for employment and an asylum for you. Thank you sir I am sorry to give— Oh no need to apologise! I consider that when a dependent does her duty as well as you have done yours she has a sort of claim upon her employer for any little assistance he can conveniently render her indeed I have already through my future mother-in-law heard of a place that I think will suit it is to undertake the education of the five daughters of Mrs Dionysius O’Gall of Bitternutt Lodge Connaught Ireland. You’ll like Ireland I think they’re such warm-hearted people there they say. It is a long way off sir. No matter—a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the distance. Not the voyage but the distance and then the sea is a barrier— From what Jane? From England and from Thornfield and— Well? From you sir. I said this almost involuntarily and with as little sanction of free will my tears gushed out. I did not cry so as to be heard however I avoided sobbing. The thought of Mrs O’Gall and Bitternutt Lodge struck cold to my heart and colder the thought of all the brine and foam destined as it seemed to rush between me and the master at whose side I now walked and coldest the remembrance of the wider ocean—wealth caste custom intervened between me and what I naturally and inevitably loved. It is a long way I again said. It is to be sure and when you get to Bitternutt Lodge Connaught Ireland I shall never see you again Jane that’s morally certain. I never go over to Ireland not having myself much of a fancy for the country. We have been good friends Jane have we not? Yes sir. And when friends are on the eve of separation they like to spend the little time that remains to them close to each other. Come! we’ll talk over the voyage and the parting quietly half-an-hour or so while the stars enter into their shining life up in heaven yonder here is the chestnut tree here is the bench at its old roots. Come we will sit there in peace to-night though we should never more be destined to sit there together. He seated me and himself. It is a long way to Ireland Janet and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels but if I can’t do better how is it to be helped? Are you anything akin to me do you think Jane? I could risk no sort of answer by this time my heart was still. Because he said I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me as now it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you—you’d forget me. That I never should sir you know— Impossible to proceed. Jane do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood? Listen! In listening I sobbed convulsively for I could repress what I endured no longer I was obliged to yield and I was shaken from head to foot with acute distress. When I did speak it was only to express an impetuous wish that I had never been born or never come to Thornfield. Because you are sorry to leave it? The vehemence of emotion stirred by grief and love within me was claiming mastery and struggling for full sway and asserting a right to predominate to overcome to live rise and reign at last yes—and to speak. I grieve to leave Thornfield I love Thornfield—I love it because I have lived in it a full and delightful life—momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high. I have talked face to face with what I reverence with what I delight in—with an original a vigorous an expanded mind. I have known you Mr Rochester and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure and it is like looking on the necessity of death. Where do you see the necessity? he asked suddenly. Where? You sir have placed it before me. In what shape? In the shape of Miss Ingram a noble and beautiful woman—your bride. My bride! What bride? I have no bride! But you will have. Yes—I will!—I will! He set his teeth. Then I must go—you have said it yourself. No you must stay! I swear it—and the oath shall be kept. I tell you I must go! I retorted roused to something like passion. Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think because I am poor obscure plain and little I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth I should have made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom conventionalities nor even of mortal flesh—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit just as if both had passed through the grave and we stood at God’s feet equal—as we are! As we are! repeated Mr Rochester—so he added enclosing me in his arms gathering me to his breast pressing his lips on my lips so Jane! Yes so sir I rejoined and yet not so for you are a married man—or as good as a married man and wed to one inferior to you—to one with whom you have no sympathy—whom I do not believe you truly love for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union therefore I am better than you—let me go! Where Jane? To Ireland? Yes—to Ireland. I have spoken my mind and can go anywhere now. Jane be still don’t struggle so like a wild frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its desperation. I am no bird and no net ensnares me I am a free human being with an independent will which I now exert to leave you. Another effort set me at liberty and I stood erect before him. And your will shall decide your destiny he said I offer you my hand my heart and a share of all my possessions. You play a farce which I merely laugh at. I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self and best earthly companion. For that fate you have already made your choice and must abide by it. Jane be still a few moments you are over-excited I will be still too. A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut it wandered away—away—to an indefinite distance—it died. The nightingale’s song was then the only voice of the hour in listening to it I again wept. Mr Rochester sat quiet looking at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke he at last said— Come to my side Jane and let us explain and understand one another. I will never again come to your side I am torn away now and cannot return. But Jane I summon you as my wife it is you only I intend to marry. I was silent I thought he mocked me. Come Jane—come hither. Your bride stands between us. He rose and with a stride reached me. My bride is here he said again drawing me to him because my equal is here and my likeness. Jane will you marry me? Still I did not answer and still I writhed myself from his grasp for I was still incredulous. Do you doubt me Jane? Entirely. You have no faith in me? Not a whit. Am I a liar in your eyes? he asked passionately. Little sceptic you shall be convinced. What love have I for Miss Ingram? None and that you know. What love has she for me? None as I have taken pains to prove I caused a rumour to reach her that my fortune was not a third of what was supposed and after that I presented myself to see the result it was coldness both from her and her mother. I would not—I could not—marry Miss Ingram. You—you strange you almost unearthly thing!—I love as my own flesh. You—poor and obscure and small and plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband. What me! I ejaculated beginning in his earnestness—and especially in his incivility—to credit his sincerity me who have not a friend in the world but you—if you are my friend not a shilling but what you have given me? You Jane I must have you for my own—entirely my own. Will you be mine? Say yes quickly. Mr Rochester let me look at your face turn to the moonlight. Why? Because I want to read your countenance—turn! There! you will find it scarcely more legible than a crumpled scratched page. Read on only make haste for I suffer. His face was very much agitated and very much flushed and there were strong workings in the features and strange gleams in the eyes. Oh Jane you torture me! he exclaimed. With that searching and yet faithful and generous look you torture me! How can I do that? If you are true and your offer real my only feelings to you must be gratitude and devotion—they cannot torture. Gratitude! he ejaculated and added wildly—Jane accept me quickly. Say Edward—give me my name—Edward—I will marry you. Are you in earnest? Do you truly love me? Do you sincerely wish me to be your wife? I do and if an oath is necessary to satisfy you I swear it. Then sir I will marry you. Edward—my little wife! Dear Edward! Come to me—come to me entirely now said he and added in his deepest tone speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine Make my happiness—I will make yours. God pardon me! he subjoined ere long and man meddle not with me I have her and will hold her. There is no one to meddle sir. I have no kindred to interfere. No—that is the best of it he said. And if I had loved him less I should have thought his accent and look of exultation savage but sitting by him roused from the nightmare of parting—called to the paradise of union—I thought only of the bliss given me to drink in so abundant a flow. Again and again he said Are you happy Jane? And again and again I answered Yes. After which he murmured It will atone—it will atone. Have I not found her friendless and cold and comfortless? Will I not guard and cherish and solace her? Is there not love in my heart and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at God’s tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world’s judgment—I wash my hands thereof. For man’s opinion—I defy it. But what had befallen the night? The moon was not yet set and we were all in shadow I could scarcely see my master’s face near as I was. And what ailed the chestnut tree? it writhed and groaned while wind roared in the laurel walk and came sweeping over us. We must go in said Mr Rochester the weather changes. I could have sat with thee till morning Jane. And so thought I could I with you. I should have said so perhaps but a livid vivid spark leapt out of a cloud at which I was looking and there was a crack a crash and a close rattling peal and I thought only of hiding my dazzled eyes against Mr Rochester’s shoulder. The rain rushed down. He hurried me up the walk through the grounds and into the house but we were quite wet before we could pass the threshold. He was taking off my shawl in the hall and shaking the water out of my loosened hair when Mrs Fairfax emerged from her room. I did not observe her at first nor did Mr Rochester. The lamp was lit. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. Hasten to take off your wet things said he and before you go good-night—good-night my darling! He kissed me repeatedly. When I looked up on leaving his arms there stood the widow pale grave and amazed. I only smiled at her and ran upstairs. Explanation will do for another time thought I. Still when I reached my chamber I felt a pang at the idea she should even temporarily misconstrue what she had seen. But joy soon effaced every other feeling and loud as the wind blew near and deep as the thunder crashed fierce and frequent as the lightning gleamed cataract-like as the rain fell during a storm of two hours’ duration I experienced no fear and little awe. Mr Rochester came thrice to my door in the course of it to ask if I was safe and tranquil and that was comfort that was strength for anything. Before I left my bed in the morning little Adèle came running in to tell me that the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been struck by lightning in the night and half of it split away. ', 'As I rose and dressed I thought over what had happened and wondered if it were a dream. I could not be certain of the reality till I had seen Mr Rochester again and heard him renew his words of love and promise. While arranging my hair I looked at my face in the glass and felt it was no longer plain there was hope in its aspect and life in its colour and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple. I had often been unwilling to look at my master because I feared he could not be pleased at my look but I was sure I might lift my face to his now and not cool his affection by its expression. I took a plain but clean and light summer dress from my drawer and put it on it seemed no attire had ever so well become me because none had I ever worn in so blissful a mood. I was not surprised when I ran down into the hall to see that a brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the night and to feel through the open glass door the breathing of a fresh and fragrant breeze. Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy. A beggar-woman and her little boy—pale ragged objects both—were coming up the walk and I ran down and gave them all the money I happened to have in my purse—some three or four shillings good or bad they must partake of my jubilee. The rooks cawed and blither birds sang but nothing was so merry or so musical as my own rejoicing heart. Mrs Fairfax surprised me by looking out of the window with a sad countenance and saying gravely—Miss Eyre will you come to breakfast? During the meal she was quiet and cool but I could not undeceive her then. I must wait for my master to give explanations and so must she. I ate what I could and then I hastened upstairs. I met Adèle leaving the schoolroom. Where are you going? It is time for lessons. Mr Rochester has sent me away to the nursery. Where is he? In there pointing to the apartment she had left and I went in and there he stood. Come and bid me good-morning said he. I gladly advanced and it was not merely a cold word now or even a shake of the hand that I received but an embrace and a kiss. It seemed natural it seemed genial to be so well loved so caressed by him. Jane you look blooming and smiling and pretty said he truly pretty this morning. Is this my pale little elf? Is this my mustard-seed? This little sunny-faced girl with the dimpled cheek and rosy lips the satin-smooth hazel hair and the radiant hazel eyes? I had green eyes reader but you must excuse the mistake for him they were new-dyed I suppose. It is Jane Eyre sir. Soon to be Jane Rochester he added in four weeks Janet not a day more. Do you hear that? I did and I could not quite comprehend it it made me giddy. The feeling the announcement sent through me was something stronger than was consistent with joy—something that smote and stunned it was I think almost fear. You blushed and now you are white Jane what is that for? Because you gave me a new name—Jane Rochester and it seems so strange. Yes Mrs Rochester said he young Mrs Rochester—Fairfax Rochester’s girl-bride. It can never be sir it does not sound likely. Human beings never enjoy complete happiness in this world. I was not born for a different destiny to the rest of my species to imagine such a lot befalling me is a fairy tale—a day-dream. Which I can and will realise. I shall begin to-day. This morning I wrote to my banker in London to send me certain jewels he has in his keeping—heirlooms for the ladies of Thornfield. In a day or two I hope to pour them into your lap for every privilege every attention shall be yours that I would accord a peer’s daughter if about to marry her. Oh sir!—never rain jewels! I don’t like to hear them spoken of. Jewels for Jane Eyre sounds unnatural and strange I would rather not have them. I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck and the circlet on your forehead—which it will become for nature at least has stamped her patent of nobility on this brow Jane and I will clasp the bracelets on these fine wrists and load these fairy-like fingers with rings. No no sir! think of other subjects and speak of other things and in another strain. Don’t address me as if I were a beauty I am your plain Quakerish governess. You are a beauty in my eyes and a beauty just after the desire of my heart—delicate and aërial. Puny and insignificant you mean. You are dreaming sir—or you are sneering. For God’s sake don’t be ironical! I will make the world acknowledge you a beauty too he went on while I really became uneasy at the strain he had adopted because I felt he was either deluding himself or trying to delude me. I will attire my Jane in satin and lace and she shall have roses in her hair and I will cover the head I love best with a priceless veil. And then you won’t know me sir and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer but an ape in a harlequin’s jacket—a jay in borrowed plumes. I would as soon see you Mr Rochester tricked out in stage-trappings as myself clad in a court-lady’s robe and I don’t call you handsome sir though I love you most dearly far too dearly to flatter you. Don’t flatter me. He pursued his theme however without noticing my deprecation. This very day I shall take you in the carriage to Millcote and you must choose some dresses for yourself. I told you we shall be married in four weeks. The wedding is to take place quietly in the church down below yonder and then I shall waft you away at once to town. After a brief stay there I shall bear my treasure to regions nearer the sun to French vineyards and Italian plains and she shall see whatever is famous in old story and in modern record she shall taste too of the life of cities and she shall learn to value herself by just comparison with others. Shall I travel?—and with you sir? You shall sojourn at Paris Rome and Naples at Florence Venice and Vienna all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by you wherever I stamped my hoof your sylph’s foot shall step also. Ten years since I flew through Europe half mad with disgust hate and rage as my companions now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed with a very angel as my comforter. I laughed at him as he said this. I am not an angel I asserted and I will not be one till I die I will be myself. Mr Rochester you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me—for you will not get it any more than I shall get it of you which I do not at all anticipate. What do you anticipate of me? For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now—a very little while and then you will turn cool and then you will be capricious and then you will be stern and I shall have much ado to please you but when you get well used to me you will perhaps like me again—like me I say not love me. I suppose your love will effervesce in six months or less. I have observed in books written by men that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband’s ardour extends. Yet after all as a friend and companion I hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master. Distasteful! and like you again! I think I shall like you again and yet again and I will make you confess I do not only like but love you—with truth fervour constancy. Yet are you not capricious sir? To women who please me only by their faces I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts—when they open to me a perspective of flatness triviality and perhaps imbecility coarseness and ill-temper but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue to the soul made of fire and the character that bends but does not break—at once supple and stable tractable and consistent—I am ever tender and true. Had you ever experience of such a character sir? Did you ever love such an one? I love it now. But before me if I indeed in any respect come up to your difficult standard? I never met your likeness. Jane you please me and you master me—you seem to submit and I like the sense of pliancy you impart and while I am twining the soft silken skein round my finger it sends a thrill up my arm to my heart. I am influenced—conquered and the influence is sweeter than I can express and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph I can win. Why do you smile Jane? What does that inexplicable that uncanny turn of countenance mean? I was thinking sir you will excuse the idea it was involuntary I was thinking of Hercules and Samson with their charmers— You were you little elfish— Hush sir! You don’t talk very wisely just now any more than those gentlemen acted very wisely. However had they been married they would no doubt by their severity as husbands have made up for their softness as suitors and so will you I fear. I wonder how you will answer me a year hence should I ask a favour it does not suit your convenience or pleasure to grant. Ask me something now Janet—the least thing I desire to be entreated— Indeed I will sir I have my petition all ready. Speak! But if you look up and smile with that countenance I shall swear concession before I know to what and that will make a fool of me. Not at all sir I ask only this don’t send for the jewels and don’t crown me with roses you might as well put a border of gold lace round that plain pocket handkerchief you have there. I might as well ‘gild refined gold.’ I know it your request is granted then—for the time. I will remand the order I despatched to my banker. But you have not yet asked for anything you have prayed a gift to be withdrawn try again. Well then sir have the goodness to gratify my curiosity which is much piqued on one point. He looked disturbed. What? what? he said hastily. Curiosity is a dangerous petition it is well I have not taken a vow to accord every request— But there can be no danger in complying with this sir. Utter it Jane but I wish that instead of a mere inquiry into perhaps a secret it was a wish for half my estate. Now King Ahasuerus! What do I want with half your estate? Do you think I am a Jew-usurer seeking good investment in land? I would much rather have all your confidence. You will not exclude me from your confidence if you admit me to your heart? You are welcome to all my confidence that is worth having Jane but for God’s sake don’t desire a useless burden! Don’t long for poison—don’t turn out a downright Eve on my hands! Why not sir? You have just been telling me how much you liked to be conquered and how pleasant over-persuasion is to you. Don’t you think I had better take advantage of the confession and begin and coax and entreat—even cry and be sulky if necessary—for the sake of a mere essay of my power? I dare you to any such experiment. Encroach presume and the game is up. Is it sir? You soon give in. How stern you look now! Your eyebrows have become as thick as my finger and your forehead resembles what in some very astonishing poetry I once saw styled ‘a blue-piled thunderloft.’ That will be your married look sir I suppose? If that will be your married look I as a Christian will soon give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what had you to ask thing—out with it? There you are less than civil now and I like rudeness a great deal better than flattery. I had rather be a thing than an angel. This is what I have to ask—Why did you take such pains to make me believe you wished to marry Miss Ingram? Is that all? Thank God it is no worse! And now he unknit his black brows looked down smiling at me and stroked my hair as if well pleased at seeing a danger averted. I think I may confess he continued even although I should make you a little indignant Jane—and I have seen what a fire-spirit you can be when you are indignant. You glowed in the cool moonlight last night when you mutinied against fate and claimed your rank as my equal. Janet by-the-bye it was you who made me the offer. Of course I did. But to the point if you please sir—Miss Ingram? Well I feigned courtship of Miss Ingram because I wished to render you as madly in love with me as I was with you and I knew jealousy would be the best ally I could call in for the furtherance of that end. Excellent! Now you are small—not one whit bigger than the end of my little finger. It was a burning shame and a scandalous disgrace to act in that way. Did you think nothing of Miss Ingram’s feelings sir? Her feelings are concentrated in one—pride and that needs humbling. Were you jealous Jane? Never mind Mr Rochester it is in no way interesting to you to know that. Answer me truly once more. Do you think Miss Ingram will not suffer from your dishonest coquetry? Won’t she feel forsaken and deserted? Impossible!—when I told you how she on the contrary deserted me the idea of my insolvency cooled or rather extinguished her flame in a moment. You have a curious designing mind Mr Rochester. I am afraid your principles on some points are eccentric. My principles were never trained Jane they may have grown a little awry for want of attention. Once again seriously may I enjoy the great good that has been vouchsafed to me without fearing that any one else is suffering the bitter pain I myself felt a while ago? That you may my good little girl there is not another being in the world has the same pure love for me as yourself—for I lay that pleasant unction to my soul Jane a belief in your affection. I turned my lips to the hand that lay on my shoulder. I loved him very much—more than I could trust myself to say—more than words had power to express. Ask something more he said presently it is my delight to be entreated and to yield. I was again ready with my request. Communicate your intentions to Mrs Fairfax sir she saw me with you last night in the hall and she was shocked. Give her some explanation before I see her again. It pains me to be misjudged by so good a woman. Go to your room and put on your bonnet he replied. I mean you to accompany me to Millcote this morning and while you prepare for the drive I will enlighten the old lady’s understanding. Did she think Janet you had given the world for love and considered it well lost? I believe she thought I had forgotten my station and yours sir. Station! station!—your station is in my heart and on the necks of those who would insult you now or hereafter.—Go. I was soon dressed and when I heard Mr Rochester quit Mrs Fairfax’s parlour I hurried down to it. The old lady had been reading her morning portion of Scripture—the Lesson for the day her Bible lay open before her and her spectacles were upon it. Her occupation suspended by Mr Rochester’s announcement seemed now forgotten her eyes fixed on the blank wall opposite expressed the surprise of a quiet mind stirred by unwonted tidings. Seeing me she roused herself she made a sort of effort to smile and framed a few words of congratulation but the smile expired and the sentence was abandoned unfinished. She put up her spectacles shut the Bible and pushed her chair back from the table. I feel so astonished she began I hardly know what to say to you Miss Eyre. I have surely not been dreaming have I? Sometimes I half fall asleep when I am sitting alone and fancy things that have never happened. It has seemed to me more than once when I have been in a doze that my dear husband who died fifteen years since has come in and sat down beside me and that I have even heard him call me by my name Alice as he used to do. Now can you tell me whether it is actually true that Mr Rochester has asked you to marry him? Don’t laugh at me. But I really thought he came in here five minutes ago and said that in a month you would be his wife. He has said the same thing to me I replied. He has! Do you believe him? Have you accepted him? Yes. She looked at me bewildered. I could never have thought it. He is a proud man all the Rochesters were proud and his father at least liked money. He too has always been called careful. He means to marry you? He tells me so. She surveyed my whole person in her eyes I read that they had there found no charm powerful enough to solve the enigma. It passes me! she continued but no doubt it is true since you say so. How it will answer I cannot tell I really don’t know. Equality of position and fortune is often advisable in such cases and there are twenty years of difference in your ages. He might almost be your father. No indeed Mrs Fairfax! exclaimed I nettled he is nothing like my father! No one who saw us together would suppose it for an instant. Mr Rochester looks as young and is as young as some men at five-and-twenty. Is it really for love he is going to marry you? she asked. I was so hurt by her coldness and scepticism that the tears rose to my eyes. I am sorry to grieve you pursued the widow but you are so young and so little acquainted with men I wished to put you on your guard. It is an old saying that ‘all is not gold that glitters’ and in this case I do fear there will be something found to be different to what either you or I expect. Why?—am I a monster? I said is it impossible that Mr Rochester should have a sincere affection for me? No you are very well and much improved of late and Mr Rochester I daresay is fond of you. I have always noticed that you were a sort of pet of his. There are times when for your sake I have been a little uneasy at his marked preference and have wished to put you on your guard but I did not like to suggest even the possibility of wrong. I knew such an idea would shock perhaps offend you and you were so discreet and so thoroughly modest and sensible I hoped you might be trusted to protect yourself. Last night I cannot tell you what I suffered when I sought all over the house and could find you nowhere nor the master either and then at twelve o’clock saw you come in with him. Well never mind that now I interrupted impatiently it is enough that all was right. I hope all will be right in the end she said but believe me you cannot be too careful. Try and keep Mr Rochester at a distance distrust yourself as well as him. Gentlemen in his station are not accustomed to marry their governesses. I was growing truly irritated happily Adèle ran in. Let me go—let me go to Millcote too! she cried. Mr Rochester won’t though there is so much room in the new carriage. Beg him to let me go mademoiselle. That I will Adèle and I hastened away with her glad to quit my gloomy monitress. The carriage was ready they were bringing it round to the front and my master was pacing the pavement Pilot following him backwards and forwards. Adèle may accompany us may she not sir? I told her no. I’ll have no brats!—I’ll have only you. Do let her go Mr Rochester if you please it would be better. Not it she will be a restraint. He was quite peremptory both in look and voice. The chill of Mrs Fairfax’s warnings and the damp of her doubts were upon me something of unsubstantiality and uncertainty had beset my hopes. I half lost the sense of power over him. I was about mechanically to obey him without further remonstrance but as he helped me into the carriage he looked at my face. What is the matter? he asked all the sunshine is gone. Do you really wish the bairn to go? Will it annoy you if she is left behind? I would far rather she went sir. Then off for your bonnet and back like a flash of lightning! cried he to Adèle. She obeyed him with what speed she might. After all a single morning’s interruption will not matter much said he when I mean shortly to claim you—your thoughts conversation and company—for life. Adèle when lifted in commenced kissing me by way of expressing her gratitude for my intercession she was instantly stowed away into a corner on the other side of him. She then peeped round to where I sat so stern a neighbour was too restrictive to him in his present fractious mood she dared whisper no observations nor ask of him any information. Let her come to me I entreated she will perhaps trouble you sir there is plenty of room on this side. He handed her over as if she had been a lapdog. I’ll send her to school yet he said but now he was smiling. Adèle heard him and asked if she was to go to school sans mademoiselle? Yes he replied absolutely sans mademoiselle for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano-tops and mademoiselle shall live with me there and only me. She will have nothing to eat you will starve her observed Adèle. I shall gather manna for her morning and night the plains and hillsides in the moon are bleached with manna Adèle. She will want to warm herself what will she do for a fire? Fire rises out of the lunar mountains when she is cold I’ll carry her up to a peak and lay her down on the edge of a crater. Oh qu’elle y sera mal—peu comfortable! And her clothes they will wear out how can she get new ones? Mr Rochester professed to be puzzled. Hem! said he. What would you do Adèle? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown do you think? And one could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow. She is far better as she is concluded Adèle after musing some time besides she would get tired of living with only you in the moon. If I were mademoiselle I would never consent to go with you. She has consented she has pledged her word. But you can’t get her there there is no road to the moon it is all air and neither you nor she can fly. Adèle look at that field. We were now outside Thornfield gates and bowling lightly along the smooth road to Millcote where the dust was well laid by the thunderstorm and where the low hedges and lofty timber trees on each side glistened green and rain-refreshed. In that field Adèle I was walking late one evening about a fortnight since—the evening of the day you helped me to make hay in the orchard meadows and as I was tired with raking swaths I sat down to rest me on a stile and there I took out a little book and a pencil and began to write about a misfortune that befell me long ago and a wish I had for happy days to come I was writing away very fast though daylight was fading from the leaf when something came up the path and stopped two yards off me. I looked at it. It was a little thing with a veil of gossamer on its head. I beckoned it to come near me it stood soon at my knee. I never spoke to it and it never spoke to me in words but I read its eyes and it read mine and our speechless colloquy was to this effect— It was a fairy and come from Elf-land it said and its errand was to make me happy I must go with it out of the common world to a lonely place—such as the moon for instance—and it nodded its head towards her horn rising over Hay-hill it told me of the alabaster cave and silver vale where we might live. I said I should like to go but reminded it as you did me that I had no wings to fly. ‘Oh’ returned the fairy ‘that does not signify! Here is a talisman will remove all difficulties’ and she held out a pretty gold ring. ‘Put it’ she said ‘on the fourth finger of my left hand and I am yours and you are mine and we shall leave earth and make our own heaven yonder.’ She nodded again at the moon. The ring Adèle is in my breeches-pocket under the disguise of a sovereign but I mean soon to change it to a ring again. But what has mademoiselle to do with it? I don’t care for the fairy you said it was mademoiselle you would take to the moon? Mademoiselle is a fairy he said whispering mysteriously. Whereupon I told her not to mind his badinage and she on her part evinced a fund of genuine French scepticism denominating Mr Rochester un vrai menteur and assuring him that she made no account whatever of his contes de fée and that du reste il n’y avait pas de fées et quand même il y en avait she was sure they would never appear to him nor ever give him rings or offer to live with him in the moon. The hour spent at Millcote was a somewhat harassing one to me. Mr Rochester obliged me to go to a certain silk warehouse there I was ordered to choose half-a-dozen dresses. I hated the business I begged leave to defer it no—it should be gone through with now. By dint of entreaties expressed in energetic whispers I reduced the half-dozen to two these however he vowed he would select himself. With anxiety I watched his eye rove over the gay stores he fixed on a rich silk of the most brilliant amethyst dye and a superb pink satin. I told him in a new series of whispers that he might as well buy me a gold gown and a silver bonnet at once I should certainly never venture to wear his choice. With infinite difficulty for he was stubborn as a stone I persuaded him to make an exchange in favour of a sober black satin and pearl-grey silk. It might pass for the present he said but he would yet see me glittering like a parterre. Glad was I to get him out of the silk warehouse and then out of a jeweller’s shop the more he bought me the more my cheek burned with a sense of annoyance and degradation. As we re-entered the carriage and I sat back feverish and fagged I remembered what in the hurry of events dark and bright I had wholly forgotten—the letter of my uncle John Eyre to Mrs Reed his intention to adopt me and make me his legatee. It would indeed be a relief I thought if I had ever so small an independency I never can bear being dressed like a doll by Mr Rochester or sitting like a second Danae with the golden shower falling daily round me. I will write to Madeira the moment I get home and tell my uncle John I am going to be married and to whom if I had but a prospect of one day bringing Mr Rochester an accession of fortune I could better endure to be kept by him now. And somewhat relieved by this idea which I failed not to execute that day I ventured once more to meet my master’s and lover’s eye which most pertinaciously sought mine though I averted both face and gaze. He smiled and I thought his smile was such as a sultan might in a blissful and fond moment bestow on a slave his gold and gems had enriched I crushed his hand which was ever hunting mine vigorously and thrust it back to him red with the passionate pressure. You need not look in that way I said if you do I’ll wear nothing but my old Lowood frocks to the end of the chapter. I’ll be married in this lilac gingham you may make a dressing-gown for yourself out of the pearl-grey silk and an infinite series of waistcoats out of the black satin. He chuckled he rubbed his hands. Oh it is rich to see and hear her! he exclaimed. Is she original? Is she piquant? I would not exchange this one little English girl for the Grand Turk’s whole seraglio gazelle-eyes houri forms and all! The Eastern allusion bit me again. I’ll not stand you an inch in the stead of a seraglio I said so don’t consider me an equivalent for one. If you have a fancy for anything in that line away with you sir to the bazaars of Stamboul without delay and lay out in extensive slave-purchases some of that spare cash you seem at a loss to spend satisfactorily here. And what will you do Janet while I am bargaining for so many tons of flesh and such an assortment of black eyes? I’ll be preparing myself to go out as a missionary to preach liberty to them that are enslaved—your harem inmates amongst the rest. I’ll get admitted there and I’ll stir up mutiny and you three-tailed bashaw as you are sir shall in a trice find yourself fettered amongst our hands nor will I for one consent to cut your bonds till you have signed a charter the most liberal that despot ever yet conferred. I would consent to be at your mercy Jane. I would have no mercy Mr Rochester if you supplicated for it with an eye like that. While you looked so I should be certain that whatever charter you might grant under coercion your first act when released would be to violate its conditions. Why Jane what would you have? I fear you will compel me to go through a private marriage ceremony besides that performed at the altar. You will stipulate I see for peculiar terms—what will they be? I only want an easy mind sir not crushed by crowded obligations. Do you remember what you said of Céline Varens?—of the diamonds the cashmeres you gave her? I will not be your English Céline Varens. I shall continue to act as Adèle’s governess by that I shall earn my board and lodging and thirty pounds a year besides. I’ll furnish my own wardrobe out of that money and you shall give me nothing but— Well but what? Your regard and if I give you mine in return that debt will be quit. Well for cool native impudence and pure innate pride you haven’t your equal said he. We were now approaching Thornfield. Will it please you to dine with me to-day? he asked as we re-entered the gates. No thank you sir. And what for ‘no thank you?’ if one may inquire. I never have dined with you sir and I see no reason why I should now till— Till what? You delight in half-phrases. Till I can’t help it. Do you suppose I eat like an ogre or a ghoul that you dread being the companion of my repast? I have formed no supposition on the subject sir but I want to go on as usual for another month. You will give up your governessing slavery at once. Indeed begging your pardon sir I shall not. I shall just go on with it as usual. I shall keep out of your way all day as I have been accustomed to do you may send for me in the evening when you feel disposed to see me and I’ll come then but at no other time. I want a smoke Jane or a pinch of snuff to comfort me under all this ‘pour me donner une contenance’ as Adèle would say and unfortunately I have neither my cigar-case nor my snuff-box. But listen—whisper. It is your time now little tyrant but it will be mine presently and when once I have fairly seized you to have and to hold I’ll just—figuratively speaking—attach you to a chain like this touching his watch-guard. Yes bonny wee thing I’ll wear you in my bosom lest my jewel I should tyne. He said this as he helped me to alight from the carriage and while he afterwards lifted out Adèle I entered the house and made good my retreat upstairs. He duly summoned me to his presence in the evening. I had prepared an occupation for him for I was determined not to spend the whole time in a tête-à-tête conversation. I remembered his fine voice I knew he liked to sing—good singers generally do. I was no vocalist myself and in his fastidious judgment no musician either but I delighted in listening when the performance was good. No sooner had twilight that hour of romance began to lower her blue and starry banner over the lattice than I rose opened the piano and entreated him for the love of heaven to give me a song. He said I was a capricious witch and that he would rather sing another time but I averred that no time was like the present. Did I like his voice? he asked. Very much. I was not fond of pampering that susceptible vanity of his but for once and from motives of expediency I would e’en soothe and stimulate it. Then Jane you must play the accompaniment. Very well sir I will try. I did try but was presently swept off the stool and denominated a little bungler. Being pushed unceremoniously to one side—which was precisely what I wished—he usurped my place and proceeded to accompany himself for he could play as well as sing. I hied me to the window-recess. And while I sat there and looked out on the still trees and dim lawn to a sweet air was sung in mellow tones the following strain— The truest love that ever heart Felt at its kindled core Did through each vein in quickened start The tide of being pour. Her coming was my hope each day Her parting was my pain The chance that did her steps delay Was ice in every vein. I dreamed it would be nameless bliss As I loved loved to be And to this object did I press As blind as eagerly. But wide as pathless was the space That lay our lives between And dangerous as the foamy race Of ocean-surges green. And haunted as a robber-path Through wilderness or wood For Might and Right and Woe and Wrath Between our spirits stood. I dangers dared I hindrance scorned I omens did defy Whatever menaced harassed warned I passed impetuous by. On sped my rainbow fast as light I flew as in a dream For glorious rose upon my sight That child of Shower and Gleam. Still bright on clouds of suffering dim Shines that soft solemn joy Nor care I now how dense and grim Disasters gather nigh. I care not in this moment sweet Though all I have rushed o’er Should come on pinion strong and fleet Proclaiming vengeance sore Though haughty Hate should strike me down Right bar approach to me And grinding Might with furious frown Swear endless enmity. My love has placed her little hand With noble faith in mine And vowed that wedlock’s sacred band Our nature shall entwine. My love has sworn with sealing kiss With me to live—to die I have at last my nameless bliss. As I love—loved am I! He rose and came towards me and I saw his face all kindled and his full falcon-eye flashing and tenderness and passion in every lineament. I quailed momentarily—then I rallied. Soft scene daring demonstration I would not have and I stood in peril of both a weapon of defence must be prepared—I whetted my tongue as he reached me I asked with asperity whom he was going to marry now? That was a strange question to be put by his darling Jane. Indeed! I considered it a very natural and necessary one he had talked of his future wife dying with him. What did he mean by such a pagan idea? I had no intention of dying with him—he might depend on that. Oh all he longed all he prayed for was that I might live with him! Death was not for such as I. Indeed it was I had as good a right to die when my time came as he had but I should bide that time and not be hurried away in a suttee. Would I forgive him for the selfish idea and prove my pardon by a reconciling kiss? No I would rather be excused. Here I heard myself apostrophised as a hard little thing and it was added any other woman would have been melted to marrow at hearing such stanzas crooned in her praise. I assured him I was naturally hard—very flinty and that he would often find me so and that moreover I was determined to show him divers rugged points in my character before the ensuing four weeks elapsed he should know fully what sort of a bargain he had made while there was yet time to rescind it. Would I be quiet and talk rationally? I would be quiet if he liked and as to talking rationally I flattered myself I was doing that now. He fretted pished and pshawed. Very good I thought you may fume and fidget as you please but this is the best plan to pursue with you I am certain. I like you more than I can say but I’ll not sink into a bathos of sentiment and with this needle of repartee I’ll keep you from the edge of the gulf too and moreover maintain by its pungent aid that distance between you and myself most conducive to our real mutual advantage. From less to more I worked him up to considerable irritation then after he had retired in dudgeon quite to the other end of the room I got up and saying I wish you good-night sir in my natural and wonted respectful manner I slipped out by the side-door and got away. The system thus entered on I pursued during the whole season of probation and with the best success. He was kept to be sure rather cross and crusty but on the whole I could see he was excellently entertained and that a lamb-like submission and turtle-dove sensibility while fostering his despotism more would have pleased his judgment satisfied his common-sense and even suited his taste less. In other people’s presence I was as formerly deferential and quiet any other line of conduct being uncalled for it was only in the evening conferences I thus thwarted and afflicted him. He continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck seven though when I appeared before him now he had no such honeyed terms as love and darling on his lips the best words at my service were provoking puppet malicious elf sprite changeling &c. For caresses too I now got grimaces for a pressure of the hand a pinch on the arm for a kiss on the cheek a severe tweak of the ear. It was all right at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to anything more tender. Mrs Fairfax I saw approved me her anxiety on my account vanished therefore I was certain I did well. Meantime Mr Rochester affirmed I was wearing him to skin and bone and threatened awful vengeance for my present conduct at some period fast coming. I laughed in my sleeve at his menaces. I can keep you in reasonable check now I reflected and I don’t doubt to be able to do it hereafter if one expedient loses its virtue another must be devised. Yet after all my task was not an easy one often I would rather have pleased than teased him. My future husband was becoming to me my whole world and more than the world almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not in those days see God for His creature of whom I had made an idol. ', 'The month of courtship had wasted its very last hours were being numbered. There was no putting off the day that advanced—the bridal day and all preparations for its arrival were complete. I at least had nothing more to do there were my trunks packed locked corded ranged in a row along the wall of my little chamber to-morrow at this time they would be far on their road to London and so should I D.V.—or rather not I but one Jane Rochester a person whom as yet I knew not. The cards of address alone remained to nail on they lay four little squares in the drawer. Mr Rochester had himself written the direction Mrs Rochester —— Hotel London on each I could not persuade myself to affix them or to have them affixed. Mrs Rochester! She did not exist she would not be born till to-morrow some time after eight o’clock A.M. and I would wait to be assured she had come into the world alive before I assigned to her all that property. It was enough that in yonder closet opposite my dressing-table garments said to be hers had already displaced my black stuff Lowood frock and straw bonnet for not to me appertained that suit of wedding raiment the pearl-coloured robe the vapoury veil pendent from the usurped portmanteau. I shut the closet to conceal the strange wraith-like apparel it contained which at this evening hour—nine o’clock—gave out certainly a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow of my apartment. I will leave you by yourself white dream I said. I am feverish I hear the wind blowing I will go out of doors and feel it. It was not only the hurry of preparation that made me feverish not only the anticipation of the great change—the new life which was to commence to-morrow both these circumstances had their share doubtless in producing that restless excited mood which hurried me forth at this late hour into the darkening grounds but a third cause influenced my mind more than they. I had at heart a strange and anxious thought. Something had happened which I could not comprehend no one knew of or had seen the event but myself it had taken place the preceding night. Mr Rochester that night was absent from home nor was he yet returned business had called him to a small estate of two or three farms he possessed thirty miles off—business it was requisite he should settle in person previous to his meditated departure from England. I waited now his return eager to disburthen my mind and to seek of him the solution of the enigma that perplexed me. Stay till he comes reader and when I disclose my secret to him you shall share the confidence. I sought the orchard driven to its shelter by the wind which all day had blown strong and full from the south without however bringing a speck of rain. Instead of subsiding as night drew on it seemed to augment its rush and deepen its roar the trees blew steadfastly one way never writhing round and scarcely tossing back their boughs once in an hour so continuous was the strain bending their branchy heads northward—the clouds drifted from pole to pole fast following mass on mass no glimpse of blue sky had been visible that July day. It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering through space. Descending the laurel walk I faced the wreck of the chestnut-tree it stood up black and riven the trunk split down the centre gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken from each other for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below though community of vitality was destroyed—the sap could flow no more their great boughs on each side were dead and next winter’s tempests would be sure to fell one or both to earth as yet however they might be said to form one tree—a ruin but an entire ruin. You did right to hold fast to each other I said as if the monster-splinters were living things and could hear me. I think scathed as you look and charred and scorched there must be a little sense of life in you yet rising out of that adhesion at the faithful honest roots you will never have green leaves more—never more see birds making nests and singing idyls in your boughs the time of pleasure and love is over with you but you are not desolate each of you has a comrade to sympathise with him in his decay. As I looked up at them the moon appeared momentarily in that part of the sky which filled their fissure her disk was blood-red and half overcast she seemed to throw on me one bewildered dreary glance and buried herself again instantly in the deep drift of cloud. The wind fell for a second round Thornfield but far away over wood and water poured a wild melancholy wail it was sad to listen to and I ran off again. Here and there I strayed through the orchard gathered up the apples with which the grass round the tree roots was thickly strewn then I employed myself in dividing the ripe from the unripe I carried them into the house and put them away in the store-room. Then I repaired to the library to ascertain whether the fire was lit for though summer I knew on such a gloomy evening Mr Rochester would like to see a cheerful hearth when he came in yes the fire had been kindled some time and burnt well. I placed his arm-chair by the chimney-corner I wheeled the table near it I let down the curtain and had the candles brought in ready for lighting. More restless than ever when I had completed these arrangements I could not sit still nor even remain in the house a little time-piece in the room and the old clock in the hall simultaneously struck ten. How late it grows! I said. I will run down to the gates it is moonlight at intervals I can see a good way on the road. He may be coming now and to meet him will save some minutes of suspense. The wind roared high in the great trees which embowered the gates but the road as far as I could see to the right hand and the left was all still and solitary save for the shadows of clouds crossing it at intervals as the moon looked out it was but a long pale line unvaried by one moving speck. A puerile tear dimmed my eye while I looked—a tear of disappointment and impatience ashamed of it I wiped it away. I lingered the moon shut herself wholly within her chamber and drew close her curtain of dense cloud the night grew dark rain came driving fast on the gale. I wish he would come! I wish he would come! I exclaimed seized with hypochondriac foreboding. I had expected his arrival before tea now it was dark what could keep him? Had an accident happened? The event of last night again recurred to me. I interpreted it as a warning of disaster. I feared my hopes were too bright to be realised and I had enjoyed so much bliss lately that I imagined my fortune had passed its meridian and must now decline. Well I cannot return to the house I thought I cannot sit by the fireside while he is abroad in inclement weather better tire my limbs than strain my heart I will go forward and meet him. I set out I walked fast but not far ere I had measured a quarter of a mile I heard the tramp of hoofs a horseman came on full gallop a dog ran by his side. Away with evil presentiment! It was he here he was mounted on Mesrour followed by Pilot. He saw me for the moon had opened a blue field in the sky and rode in it watery bright he took his hat off and waved it round his head. I now ran to meet him. There! he exclaimed as he stretched out his hand and bent from the saddle You can’t do without me that is evident. Step on my boot-toe give me both hands mount! I obeyed joy made me agile I sprang up before him. A hearty kissing I got for a welcome and some boastful triumph which I swallowed as well as I could. He checked himself in his exultation to demand But is there anything the matter Janet that you come to meet me at such an hour? Is there anything wrong? No but I thought you would never come. I could not bear to wait in the house for you especially with this rain and wind. Rain and wind indeed! Yes you are dripping like a mermaid pull my cloak round you but I think you are feverish Jane both your cheek and hand are burning hot. I ask again is there anything the matter? Nothing now I am neither afraid nor unhappy. Then you have been both? Rather but I’ll tell you all about it by-and-by sir and I daresay you will only laugh at me for my pains. I’ll laugh at you heartily when to-morrow is past till then I dare not my prize is not certain. This is you who have been as slippery as an eel this last month and as thorny as a briar-rose? I could not lay a finger anywhere but I was pricked and now I seem to have gathered up a stray lamb in my arms. You wandered out of the fold to seek your shepherd did you Jane? I wanted you but don’t boast. Here we are at Thornfield now let me get down. He landed me on the pavement. As John took his horse and he followed me into the hall he told me to make haste and put something dry on and then return to him in the library and he stopped me as I made for the staircase to extort a promise that I would not be long nor was I long in five minutes I rejoined him. I found him at supper. Take a seat and bear me company Jane please God it is the last meal but one you will eat at Thornfield Hall for a long time. I sat down near him but told him I could not eat. Is it because you have the prospect of a journey before you Jane? Is it the thoughts of going to London that takes away your appetite? I cannot see my prospects clearly to-night sir and I hardly know what thoughts I have in my head. Everything in life seems unreal. Except me I am substantial enough—touch me. You sir are the most phantom-like of all you are a mere dream. He held out his hand laughing. Is that a dream? said he placing it close to my eyes. He had a rounded muscular and vigorous hand as well as a long strong arm. Yes though I touch it it is a dream said I as I put it down from before my face. Sir have you finished supper? Yes Jane. I rang the bell and ordered away the tray. When we were again alone I stirred the fire and then took a low seat at my master’s knee. It is near midnight I said. Yes but remember Jane you promised to wake with me the night before my wedding. I did and I will keep my promise for an hour or two at least I have no wish to go to bed. Are all your arrangements complete? All sir. And on my part likewise he returned I have settled everything and we shall leave Thornfield to-morrow within half-an-hour after our return from church. Very well sir. With what an extraordinary smile you uttered that word—‘very well’ Jane! What a bright spot of colour you have on each cheek! and how strangely your eyes glitter! Are you well? I believe I am. Believe! What is the matter? Tell me what you feel. I could not sir no words could tell you what I feel. I wish this present hour would never end who knows with what fate the next may come charged? This is hypochondria Jane. You have been over-excited or over-fatigued. Do you sir feel calm and happy? Calm?—no but happy—to the heart’s core. I looked up at him to read the signs of bliss in his face it was ardent and flushed. Give me your confidence Jane he said relieve your mind of any weight that oppresses it by imparting it to me. What do you fear?—that I shall not prove a good husband? It is the idea farthest from my thoughts. Are you apprehensive of the new sphere you are about to enter?—of the new life into which you are passing? No. You puzzle me Jane your look and tone of sorrowful audacity perplex and pain me. I want an explanation. Then sir listen. You were from home last night? I was I know that and you hinted a while ago at something which had happened in my absence—nothing probably of consequence but in short it has disturbed you. Let me hear it. Mrs Fairfax has said something perhaps? or you have overheard the servants talk?—your sensitive self-respect has been wounded? No sir. It struck twelve—I waited till the time-piece had concluded its silver chime and the clock its hoarse vibrating stroke and then I proceeded. All day yesterday I was very busy and very happy in my ceaseless bustle for I am not as you seem to think troubled by any haunting fears about the new sphere et cetera I think it a glorious thing to have the hope of living with you because I love you. No sir don’t caress me now—let me talk undisturbed. Yesterday I trusted well in Providence and believed that events were working together for your good and mine it was a fine day if you recollect—the calmness of the air and sky forbade apprehensions respecting your safety or comfort on your journey. I walked a little while on the pavement after tea thinking of you and I beheld you in imagination so near me I scarcely missed your actual presence. I thought of the life that lay before me—your life sir—an existence more expansive and stirring than my own as much more so as the depths of the sea to which the brook runs are than the shallows of its own strait channel. I wondered why moralists call this world a dreary wilderness for me it blossomed like a rose. Just at sunset the air turned cold and the sky cloudy I went in Sophie called me upstairs to look at my wedding-dress which they had just brought and under it in the box I found your present—the veil which in your princely extravagance you sent for from London resolved I suppose since I would not have jewels to cheat me into accepting something as costly. I smiled as I unfolded it and devised how I would tease you about your aristocratic tastes and your efforts to masque your plebeian bride in the attributes of a peeress. I thought how I would carry down to you the square of unembroidered blond I had myself prepared as a covering for my low-born head and ask if that was not good enough for a woman who could bring her husband neither fortune beauty nor connections. I saw plainly how you would look and heard your impetuous republican answers and your haughty disavowal of any necessity on your part to augment your wealth or elevate your standing by marrying either a purse or a coronet. How well you read me you witch! interposed Mr Rochester but what did you find in the veil besides its embroidery? Did you find poison or a dagger that you look so mournful now? No no sir besides the delicacy and richness of the fabric I found nothing save Fairfax Rochester’s pride and that did not scare me because I am used to the sight of the demon. But sir as it grew dark the wind rose it blew yesterday evening not as it blows now—wild and high—but ‘with a sullen moaning sound’ far more eerie. I wished you were at home. I came into this room and the sight of the empty chair and fireless hearth chilled me. For some time after I went to bed I could not sleep—a sense of anxious excitement distressed me. The gale still rising seemed to my ear to muffle a mournful under-sound whether in the house or abroad I could not at first tell but it recurred doubtful yet doleful at every lull at last I made out it must be some dog howling at a distance. I was glad when it ceased. On sleeping I continued in dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night. I continued also the wish to be with you and experienced a strange regretful consciousness of some barrier dividing us. During all my first sleep I was following the windings of an unknown road total obscurity environed me rain pelted me I was burdened with the charge of a little child a very small creature too young and feeble to walk and which shivered in my cold arms and wailed piteously in my ear. I thought sir that you were on the road a long way before me and I strained every nerve to overtake you and made effort on effort to utter your name and entreat you to stop—but my movements were fettered and my voice still died away inarticulate while you I felt withdrew farther and farther every moment. And these dreams weigh on your spirits now Jane when I am close to you? Little nervous subject! Forget visionary woe and think only of real happiness! You say you love me Janet yes—I will not forget that and you cannot deny it. Those words did not die inarticulate on your lips. I heard them clear and soft a thought too solemn perhaps but sweet as music—‘I think it is a glorious thing to have the hope of living with you Edward because I love you.’ Do you love me Jane?—repeat it. I do sir—I do with my whole heart. Well he said after some minutes’ silence it is strange but that sentence has penetrated my breast painfully. Why? I think because you said it with such an earnest religious energy and because your upward gaze at me now is the very sublime of faith truth and devotion it is too much as if some spirit were near me. Look wicked Jane as you know well how to look coin one of your wild shy provoking smiles tell me you hate me—tease me vex me do anything but move me I would rather be incensed than saddened. I will tease you and vex you to your heart’s content when I have finished my tale but hear me to the end. I thought Jane you had told me all. I thought I had found the source of your melancholy in a dream. I shook my head. What! is there more? But I will not believe it to be anything important. I warn you of incredulity beforehand. Go on. The disquietude of his air the somewhat apprehensive impatience of his manner surprised me but I proceeded. I dreamt another dream sir that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin the retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the stately front nothing remained but a shell-like wall very high and very fragile-looking. I wandered on a moonlight night through the grass-grown enclosure within here I stumbled over a marble hearth and there over a fallen fragment of cornice. Wrapped up in a shawl I still carried the unknown little child I might not lay it down anywhere however tired were my arms—however much its weight impeded my progress I must retain it. I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the road I was sure it was you and you were departing for many years and for a distant country. I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous haste eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top the stones rolled from under my feet the ivy branches I grasped gave way the child clung round my neck in terror and almost strangled me at last I gained the summit. I saw you like a speck on a white track lessening every moment. The blast blew so strong I could not stand. I sat down on the narrow ledge I hushed the scared infant in my lap you turned an angle of the road I bent forward to take a last look the wall crumbled I was shaken the child rolled from my knee I lost my balance fell and woke. Now Jane that is all. All the preface sir the tale is yet to come. On waking a gleam dazzled my eyes I thought—Oh it is daylight! But I was mistaken it was only candlelight. Sophie I supposed had come in. There was a light in the dressing-table and the door of the closet where before going to bed I had hung my wedding-dress and veil stood open I heard a rustling there. I asked ‘Sophie what are you doing?’ No one answered but a form emerged from the closet it took the light held it aloft and surveyed the garments pendent from the portmanteau. ‘Sophie! Sophie!’ I again cried and still it was silent. I had risen up in bed I bent forward first surprise then bewilderment came over me and then my blood crept cold through my veins. Mr Rochester this was not Sophie it was not Leah it was not Mrs Fairfax it was not—no I was sure of it and am still—it was not even that strange woman Grace Poole. It must have been one of them interrupted my master. No sir I solemnly assure you to the contrary. The shape standing before me had never crossed my eyes within the precincts of Thornfield Hall before the height the contour were new to me. Describe it Jane. It seemed sir a woman tall and large with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on it was white and straight but whether gown sheet or shroud I cannot tell. Did you see her face? Not at first. But presently she took my veil from its place she held it up gazed at it long and then she threw it over her own head and turned to the mirror. At that moment I saw the reflection of the visage and features quite distinctly in the dark oblong glass. And how were they? Fearful and ghastly to me—oh sir I never saw a face like it! It was a discoloured face—it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments! Ghosts are usually pale Jane. This sir was purple the lips were swelled and dark the brow furrowed the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes. Shall I tell you of what it reminded me? You may. Of the foul German spectre—the Vampyre. Ah!—what did it do? Sir it removed my veil from its gaunt head rent it in two parts and flinging both on the floor trampled on them. It removed my veil from its gaunt head rent it in two parts and flinging both on the floor trampled on them Afterwards? It drew aside the window-curtain and looked out perhaps it saw dawn approaching for taking the candle it retreated to the door. Just at my bedside the figure stopped the fiery eyes glared upon me—she thrust up her candle close to my face and extinguished it under my eyes. I was aware her lurid visage flamed over mine and I lost consciousness for the second time in my life—only the second time—I became insensible from terror. Who was with you when you revived? No one sir but the broad day. I rose bathed my head and face in water drank a long draught felt that though enfeebled I was not ill and determined that to none but you would I impart this vision. Now sir tell me who and what that woman was? The creature of an over-stimulated brain that is certain. I must be careful of you my treasure nerves like yours were not made for rough handling. Sir depend on it my nerves were not in fault the thing was real the transaction actually took place. And your previous dreams were they real too? Is Thornfield Hall a ruin? Am I severed from you by insuperable obstacles? Am I leaving you without a tear—without a kiss—without a word? Not yet. Am I about to do it? Why the day is already commenced which is to bind us indissolubly and when we are once united there shall be no recurrence of these mental terrors I guarantee that. Mental terrors sir! I wish I could believe them to be only such I wish it more now than ever since even you cannot explain to me the mystery of that awful visitant. And since I cannot do it Jane it must have been unreal. But sir when I said so to myself on rising this morning and when I looked round the room to gather courage and comfort from the cheerful aspect of each familiar object in full daylight there—on the carpet—I saw what gave the distinct lie to my hypothesis—the veil torn from top to bottom in two halves! I felt Mr Rochester start and shudder he hastily flung his arms round me. Thank God! he exclaimed that if anything malignant did come near you last night it was only the veil that was harmed. Oh to think what might have happened! He drew his breath short and strained me so close to him I could scarcely pant. After some minutes’ silence he continued cheerily— Now Janet I’ll explain to you all about it. It was half dream half reality. A woman did I doubt not enter your room and that woman was—must have been—Grace Poole. You call her a strange being yourself from all you know you have reason so to call her—what did she do to me? what to Mason? In a state between sleeping and waking you noticed her entrance and her actions but feverish almost delirious as you were you ascribed to her a goblin appearance different from her own the long dishevelled hair the swelled black face the exaggerated stature were figments of imagination results of nightmare the spiteful tearing of the veil was real and it is like her. I see you would ask why I keep such a woman in my house when we have been married a year and a day I will tell you but not now. Are you satisfied Jane? Do you accept my solution of the mystery? I reflected and in truth it appeared to me the only possible one satisfied I was not but to please him I endeavoured to appear so—relieved I certainly did feel so I answered him with a contented smile. And now as it was long past one I prepared to leave him. Does not Sophie sleep with Adèle in the nursery? he asked as I lit my candle. Yes sir. And there is room enough in Adèle’s little bed for you. You must share it with her to-night Jane it is no wonder that the incident you have related should make you nervous and I would rather you did not sleep alone promise me to go to the nursery. I shall be very glad to do so sir. And fasten the door securely on the inside. Wake Sophie when you go upstairs under pretence of requesting her to rouse you in good time to-morrow for you must be dressed and have finished breakfast before eight. And now no more sombre thoughts chase dull care away Janet. Don’t you hear to what soft whispers the wind has fallen? and there is no more beating of rain against the window-panes look here he lifted up the curtain—it is a lovely night! It was. Half heaven was pure and stainless the clouds now trooping before the wind which had shifted to the west were filing off eastward in long silvered columns. The moon shone peacefully. Well said Mr Rochester gazing inquiringly into my eyes how is my Janet now? The night is serene sir and so am I. And you will not dream of separation and sorrow to-night but of happy love and blissful union. This prediction was but half fulfilled I did not indeed dream of sorrow but as little did I dream of joy for I never slept at all. With little Adèle in my arms I watched the slumber of childhood—so tranquil so passionless so innocent—and waited for the coming day all my life was awake and astir in my frame and as soon as the sun rose I rose too. I remember Adèle clung to me as I left her I remember I kissed her as I loosened her little hands from my neck and I cried over her with strange emotion and quitted her because I feared my sobs would break her still sound repose. She seemed the emblem of my past life and he I was now to array myself to meet the dread but adored type of my unknown future day. ', 'Sophie came at seven to dress me she was very long indeed in accomplishing her task so long that Mr Rochester grown I suppose impatient of my delay sent up to ask why I did not come. She was just fastening my veil the plain square of blond after all to my hair with a brooch I hurried from under her hands as soon as I could. Stop! she cried in French. Look at yourself in the mirror you have not taken one peep. So I turned at the door I saw a robed and veiled figure so unlike my usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger. Jane! called a voice and I hastened down. I was received at the foot of the stairs by Mr Rochester. Lingerer! he said my brain is on fire with impatience and you tarry so long! He took me into the dining-room surveyed me keenly all over pronounced me fair as a lily and not only the pride of his life but the desire of his eyes and then telling me he would give me but ten minutes to eat some breakfast he rang the bell. One of his lately hired servants a footman answered it. Is John getting the carriage ready? Yes sir. Is the luggage brought down? They are bringing it down sir. Go you to the church see if Mr Wood the clergyman and the clerk are there return and tell me. The church as the reader knows was but just beyond the gates the footman soon returned. Mr Wood is in the vestry sir putting on his surplice. And the carriage? The horses are harnessing. We shall not want it to go to church but it must be ready the moment we return all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped on and the coachman in his seat. Yes sir. Jane are you ready? I rose. There were no groomsmen no bridesmaids no relatives to wait for or marshal none but Mr Rochester and I. Mrs Fairfax stood in the hall as we passed. I would fain have spoken to her but my hand was held by a grasp of iron I was hurried along by a stride I could hardly follow and to look at Mr Rochester’s face was to feel that not a second of delay would be tolerated for any purpose. I wonder what other bridegroom ever looked as he did—so bent up to a purpose so grimly resolute or who under such steadfast brows ever revealed such flaming and flashing eyes. I know not whether the day was fair or foul in descending the drive I gazed neither on sky nor earth my heart was with my eyes and both seemed migrated into Mr Rochester’s frame. I wanted to see the invisible thing on which as we went along he appeared to fasten a glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts whose force he seemed breasting and resisting. At the churchyard wicket he stopped he discovered I was quite out of breath. Am I cruel in my love? he said. Delay an instant lean on me Jane. And now I can recall the picture of the grey old house of God rising calm before me of a rook wheeling round the steeple of a ruddy morning sky beyond. I remember something too of the green grave-mounds and I have not forgotten either two figures of strangers straying amongst the low hillocks and reading the mementoes graven on the few mossy head-stones. I noticed them because as they saw us they passed round to the back of the church and I doubted not they were going to enter by the side-aisle door and witness the ceremony. By Mr Rochester they were not observed he was earnestly looking at my face from which the blood had I daresay momentarily fled for I felt my forehead dewy and my cheeks and lips cold. When I rallied which I soon did he walked gently with me up the path to the porch. We entered the quiet and humble temple the priest waited in his white surplice at the lowly altar the clerk beside him. All was still two shadows only moved in a remote corner. My conjecture had been correct the strangers had slipped in before us and they now stood by the vault of the Rochesters their backs towards us viewing through the rails the old time-stained marble tomb where a kneeling angel guarded the remains of Damer de Rochester slain at Marston Moor in the time of the civil wars and of Elizabeth his wife. Our place was taken at the communion rails. Hearing a cautious step behind me I glanced over my shoulder one of the strangers—a gentleman evidently—was advancing up the chancel. The service began. The explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through and then the clergyman came a step further forward and bending slightly towards Mr Rochester went on. I require and charge you both as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in matrimony ye do now confess it for be ye well assured that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth allow are not joined together by God neither is their matrimony lawful. He paused as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence ever broken by reply? Not perhaps once in a hundred years. And the clergyman who had not lifted his eyes from his book and had held his breath but for a moment was proceeding his hand was already stretched towards Mr Rochester as his lips unclosed to ask Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded wife?—when a distinct and near voice said— The marriage cannot go on I declare the existence of an impediment. The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute the clerk did the same Mr Rochester moved slightly as if an earthquake had rolled under his feet taking a firmer footing and not turning his head or eyes he said Proceed. Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word with deep but low intonation. Presently Mr Wood said— I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been asserted and evidence of its truth or falsehood. The ceremony is quite broken off subjoined the voice behind us. I am in a condition to prove my allegation an insuperable impediment to this marriage exists. Mr Rochester heard but heeded not he stood stubborn and rigid making no movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a hot and strong grasp he had! and how like quarried marble was his pale firm massive front at this moment! How his eye shone still watchful and yet wild beneath! Mr Wood seemed at a loss. What is the nature of the impediment? he asked. Perhaps it may be got over—explained away? Hardly was the answer. I have called it insuperable and I speak advisedly. The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued uttering each word distinctly calmly steadily but not loudly— It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr Rochester has a wife now living. My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated to thunder—my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt frost or fire but I was collected and in no danger of swooning. I looked at Mr Rochester I made him look at me. His whole face was colourless rock his eye was both spark and flint. He disavowed nothing he seemed as if he would defy all things. Without speaking without smiling without seeming to recognise in me a human being he only twined my waist with his arm and riveted me to his side. Who are you? he asked of the intruder. My name is Briggs a solicitor of —— Street London. And you would thrust on me a wife? I would remind you of your lady’s existence sir which the law recognises if you do not. Favour me with an account of her—with her name her parentage her place of abode. Certainly. Mr Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket and read out in a sort of official nasal voice— ‘I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October A.D. —— a date of fifteen years back Edward Fairfax Rochester of Thornfield Hall in the county of —— and of Ferndean Manor in ——shire England was married to my sister Bertha Antoinetta Mason daughter of Jonas Mason merchant and of Antoinetta his wife a Creole at —— church Spanish Town Jamaica. The record of the marriage will be found in the register of that church—a copy of it is now in my possession. Signed Richard Mason.’ That—if a genuine document—may prove I have been married but it does not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still living. She was living three months ago returned the lawyer. How do you know? I have a witness to the fact whose testimony even you sir will scarcely controvert. Produce him—or go to hell. I will produce him first—he is on the spot. Mr Mason have the goodness to step forward. Mr Rochester on hearing the name set his teeth he experienced too a sort of strong convulsive quiver near to him as I was I felt the spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame. The second stranger who had hitherto lingered in the background now drew near a pale face looked over the solicitor’s shoulder—yes it was Mason himself. Mr Rochester turned and glared at him. His eye as I have often said was a black eye it had now a tawny nay a bloody light in its gloom and his face flushed—olive cheek and hueless forehead received a glow as from spreading ascending heart-fire and he stirred lifted his strong arm—he could have struck Mason dashed him on the church-floor shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his body—but Mason shrank away and cried faintly Good God! Contempt fell cool on Mr Rochester—his passion died as if a blight had shrivelled it up he only asked—What have you to say? An inaudible reply escaped Mason’s white lips. The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again demand what have you to say? Sir—sir interrupted the clergyman do not forget you are in a sacred place. Then addressing Mason he inquired gently Are you aware sir whether or not this gentleman’s wife is still living? Courage urged the lawyer—speak out. She is now living at Thornfield Hall said Mason in more articulate tones I saw her there last April. I am her brother. At Thornfield Hall! ejaculated the clergyman. Impossible! I am an old resident in this neighbourhood sir and I never heard of a Mrs Rochester at Thornfield Hall. I saw a grim smile contort Mr Rochester’s lips and he muttered— No by God! I took care that none should hear of it—or of her under that name. He mused—for ten minutes he held counsel with himself he formed his resolve and announced it— Enough! all shall bolt out at once like the bullet from the barrel. Wood close your book and take off your surplice John Green to the clerk leave the church there will be no wedding to-day. The man obeyed. Mr Rochester continued hardily and recklessly Bigamy is an ugly word!—I meant however to be a bigamist but fate has out-manoeuvred me or Providence has checked me—perhaps the last. I am little better than a devil at this moment and as my pastor there would tell me deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God even to the quenchless fire and deathless worm. Gentlemen my plan is broken up—what this lawyer and his client say is true I have been married and the woman to whom I was married lives! You say you never heard of a Mrs Rochester at the house up yonder Wood but I daresay you have many a time inclined your ear to gossip about the mysterious lunatic kept there under watch and ward. Some have whispered to you that she is my bastard half-sister some my cast-off mistress. I now inform you that she is my wife whom I married fifteen years ago—Bertha Mason by name sister of this resolute personage who is now with his quivering limbs and white cheeks showing you what a stout heart men may bear. Cheer up Dick!—never fear me!—I’d almost as soon strike a woman as you. Bertha Mason is mad and she came of a mad family idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother the Creole was both a madwoman and a drunkard!—as I found out after I had wed the daughter for they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha like a dutiful child copied her parent in both points. I had a charming partner—pure wise modest you can fancy I was a happy man. I went through rich scenes! Oh! my experience has been heavenly if you only knew it! But I owe you no further explanation. Briggs Wood Mason I invite you all to come up to the house and visit Mrs Poole’s patient and my wife! You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into espousing and judge whether or not I had a right to break the compact and seek sympathy with something at least human. This girl he continued looking at me knew no more than you Wood of the disgusting secret she thought all was fair and legal and never dreamt she was going to be entrapped into a feigned union with a defrauded wretch already bound to a bad mad and embruted partner! Come all of you—follow! Still holding me fast he left the church the three gentlemen came after. At the front door of the hall we found the carriage. Take it back to the coach-house John said Mr Rochester coolly it will not be wanted to-day. At our entrance Mrs Fairfax Adèle Sophie Leah advanced to meet and greet us. To the right-about—every soul! cried the master away with your congratulations! Who wants them? Not I!—they are fifteen years too late! He passed on and ascended the stairs still holding my hand and still beckoning the gentlemen to follow him which they did. We mounted the first staircase passed up the gallery proceeded to the third storey the low black door opened by Mr Rochester’s master-key admitted us to the tapestried room with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet. You know this place Mason said our guide she bit and stabbed you here. He lifted the hangings from the wall uncovering the second door this too he opened. In a room without a window there burnt a fire guarded by a high and strong fender and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire apparently cooking something in a saucepan. In the deep shade at the farther end of the room a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was whether beast or human being one could not at first sight tell it grovelled seemingly on all fours it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal but it was covered with clothing and a quantity of dark grizzled hair wild as a mane hid its head and face. Good-morrow Mrs Poole! said Mr Rochester. How are you? and how is your charge to-day? We’re tolerable sir I thank you replied Grace lifting the boiling mess carefully on to the hob rather snappish but not ’rageous. A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report the clothed hyena rose up and stood tall on its hind-feet. Ah! sir she sees you! exclaimed Grace you’d better not stay. Only a few moments Grace you must allow me a few moments. Take care then sir!—for God’s sake take care! The maniac bellowed she parted her shaggy locks from her visage and gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognised well that purple face—those bloated features. Mrs Poole advanced. Keep out of the way said Mr Rochester thrusting her aside she has no knife now I suppose and I’m on my guard. One never knows what she has sir she is so cunning it is not in mortal discretion to fathom her craft. We had better leave her whispered Mason. Go to the devil! was his brother-in-law’s recommendation. ’Ware! cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr Rochester flung me behind him the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously and laid her teeth to his cheek they struggled. She was a big woman in stature almost equalling her husband and corpulent besides she showed virile force in the contest—more than once she almost throttled him athletic as he was. He could have settled her with a well-planted blow but he would not strike he would only wrestle. At last he mastered her arms Grace Poole gave him a cord and he pinioned them behind her with more rope which was at hand he bound her to a chair. The operation was performed amidst the fiercest yells and the most convulsive plunges. Mr Rochester then turned to the spectators he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate. That is my wife said he. Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to know—such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure hours! And this is what I wished to have laying his hand on my shoulder this young girl who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon I wanted her just as a change after that fierce ragout. Wood and Briggs look at the difference! Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder—this face with that mask—this form with that bulk then judge me priest of the gospel and man of the law and remember with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged! Off with you now. I must shut up my prize. We all withdrew. Mr Rochester stayed a moment behind us to give some further order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as he descended the stair. You madam said he are cleared from all blame your uncle will be glad to hear it—if indeed he should be still living—when Mr Mason returns to Madeira. My uncle! What of him? Do you know him? Mr Mason does. Mr Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of his house for some years. When your uncle received your letter intimating the contemplated union between yourself and Mr Rochester Mr Mason who was staying at Madeira to recruit his health on his way back to Jamaica happened to be with him. Mr Eyre mentioned the intelligence for he knew that my client here was acquainted with a gentleman of the name of Rochester. Mr Mason astonished and distressed as you may suppose revealed the real state of matters. Your uncle I am sorry to say is now on a sick bed from which considering the nature of his disease—decline—and the stage it has reached it is unlikely he will ever rise. He could not then hasten to England himself to extricate you from the snare into which you had fallen but he implored Mr Mason to lose no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage. He referred him to me for assistance. I used all despatch and am thankful I was not too late as you doubtless must be also. Were I not morally certain that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira I would advise you to accompany Mr Mason back but as it is I think you had better remain in England till you can hear further either from or of Mr Eyre. Have we anything else to stay for? he inquired of Mr Mason. No no—let us be gone was the anxious reply and without waiting to take leave of Mr Rochester they made their exit at the hall door. The clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences either of admonition or reproof with his haughty parishioner this duty done he too departed. I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room to which I had now withdrawn. The house cleared I shut myself in fastened the bolt that none might intrude and proceeded—not to weep not to mourn I was yet too calm for that but—mechanically to take off the wedding dress and replace it by the stuff gown I had worn yesterday as I thought for the last time. I then sat down I felt weak and tired. I leaned my arms on a table and my head dropped on them. And now I thought till now I had only heard seen moved—followed up and down where I was led or dragged—watched event rush on event disclosure open beyond disclosure but now I thought. The morning had been a quiet morning enough—all except the brief scene with the lunatic the transaction in the church had not been noisy there was no explosion of passion no loud altercation no dispute no defiance or challenge no tears no sobs a few words had been spoken a calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made some stern short questions put by Mr Rochester answers explanations given evidence adduced an open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master then the living proof had been seen the intruders were gone and all was over. I was in my own room as usual—just myself without obvious change nothing had smitten me or scathed me or maimed me. And yet where was the Jane Eyre of yesterday?—where was her life?—where were her prospects? Jane Eyre who had been an ardent expectant woman—almost a bride was a cold solitary girl again her life was pale her prospects were desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer a white December storm had whirled over June ice glazed the ripe apples drifts crushed the blowing roses on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud lanes which last night blushed full of flowers to-day were pathless with untrodden snow and the woods which twelve hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves between the tropics now spread waste wild and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead—struck with a subtle doom such as in one night fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes yesterday so blooming and glowing they lay stark chill livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at my love that feeling which was my master’s—which he had created it shivered in my heart like a suffering child in a cold cradle sickness and anguish had seized it it could not seek Mr Rochester’s arms—it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh never more could it turn to him for faith was blighted—confidence destroyed! Mr Rochester was not to me what he had been for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice to him I would not say he had betrayed me but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea and from his presence I must go that I perceived well. When—how—whither I could not yet discern but he himself I doubted not would hurry me from Thornfield. Real affection it seemed he could not have for me it had been only fitful passion that was balked he would want me no more. I should fear even to cross his path now my view must be hateful to him. Oh how blind had been my eyes! How weak my conduct! My eyes were covered and closed eddying darkness seemed to swim round me and reflection came in as black and confused a flow. Self-abandoned relaxed and effortless I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains and felt the torrent come to rise I had no will to flee I had no strength. I lay faint longing to be dead. One idea only still throbbed life-like within me—a remembrance of God it begot an unuttered prayer these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind as something that should be whispered but no energy was found to express them— Be not far from me for trouble is near there is none to help. It was near and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it—as I had neither joined my hands nor bent my knees nor moved my lips—it came in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn my love lost my hope quenched my faith death-struck swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described in truth the waters came into my soul I sank in deep mire I felt no standing I came into deep waters the floods overflowed me. ', 'Some time in the afternoon I raised my head and looking round and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall I asked What am I to do? But the answer my mind gave—Leave Thornfield at once—was so prompt so dread that I stopped my ears. I said I could not bear such words now. That I am not Edward Rochester’s bride is the least part of my woe I alleged that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams and found them all void and vain is a horror I could bear and master but that I must leave him decidedly instantly entirely is intolerable. I cannot do it. But then a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me and Conscience turned tyrant held Passion by the throat told her tauntingly she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony. Let me be torn away then I cried. Let another help me! No you shall tear yourself away none shall help you you shall yourself pluck out your right eye yourself cut off your right hand your heart shall be the victim and you the priest to transfix it. I rose up suddenly terror-struck at the solitude which so ruthless a judge haunted—at the silence which so awful a voice filled. My head swam as I stood erect. I perceived that I was sickening from excitement and inanition neither meat nor drink had passed my lips that day for I had taken no breakfast. And with a strange pang I now reflected that long as I had been shut up here no message had been sent to ask how I was or to invite me to come down not even little Adèle had tapped at the door not even Mrs Fairfax had sought me. Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes I murmured as I undrew the bolt and passed out. I stumbled over an obstacle my head was still dizzy my sight was dim and my limbs were feeble. I could not soon recover myself. I fell but not on to the ground an outstretched arm caught me. I looked up—I was supported by Mr Rochester who sat in a chair across my chamber threshold. You come out at last he said. Well I have been waiting for you long and listening yet not one movement have I heard nor one sob five minutes more of that death-like hush and I should have forced the lock like a burglar. So you shun me?—you shut yourself up and grieve alone! I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate I expected a scene of some kind. I was prepared for the hot rain of tears only I wanted them to be shed on my breast now a senseless floor has received them or your drenched handkerchief. But I err you have not wept at all! I see a white cheek and a faded eye but no trace of tears. I suppose then your heart has been weeping blood? Well Jane! not a word of reproach? Nothing bitter—nothing poignant? Nothing to cut a feeling or sting a passion? You sit quietly where I have placed you and regard me with a weary passive look. Jane I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter that ate of his bread and drank of his cup and lay in his bosom had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me? Reader I forgave him at the moment and on the spot. There was such deep remorse in his eye such true pity in his tone such manly energy in his manner and besides there was such unchanged love in his whole look and mien—I forgave him all yet not in words not outwardly only at my heart’s core. You know I am a scoundrel Jane? ere long he inquired wistfully—wondering I suppose at my continued silence and tameness the result rather of weakness than of will. Yes sir. Then tell me so roundly and sharply—don’t spare me. I cannot I am tired and sick. I want some water. He heaved a sort of shuddering sigh and taking me in his arms carried me downstairs. At first I did not know to what room he had borne me all was cloudy to my glazed sight presently I felt the reviving warmth of a fire for summer as it was I had become icy cold in my chamber. He put wine to my lips I tasted it and revived then I ate something he offered me and was soon myself. I was in the library—sitting in his chair—he was quite near. If I could go out of life now without too sharp a pang it would be well for me I thought then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr Rochester’s. I must leave him it appears. I do not want to leave him—I cannot leave him. How are you now Jane? Much better sir I shall be well soon. Taste the wine again Jane. I obeyed him then he put the glass on the table stood before me and looked at me attentively. Suddenly he turned away with an inarticulate exclamation full of passionate emotion of some kind he walked fast through the room and came back he stooped towards me as if to kiss me but I remembered caresses were now forbidden. I turned my face away and put his aside. What!—How is this? he exclaimed hastily. Oh I know! you won’t kiss the husband of Bertha Mason? You consider my arms filled and my embraces appropriated? At any rate there is neither room nor claim for me sir. Why Jane? I will spare you the trouble of much talking I will answer for you—Because I have a wife already you would reply.—I guess rightly? Yes. If you think so you must have a strange opinion of me you must regard me as a plotting profligate—a base and low rake who has been simulating disinterested love in order to draw you into a snare deliberately laid and strip you of honour and rob you of self-respect. What do you say to that? I see you can say nothing in the first place you are faint still and have enough to do to draw your breath in the second place you cannot yet accustom yourself to accuse and revile me and besides the flood-gates of tears are opened and they would rush out if you spoke much and you have no desire to expostulate to upbraid to make a scene you are thinking how to act—talking you consider is of no use. I know you—I am on my guard. Sir I do not wish to act against you I said and my unsteady voice warned me to curtail my sentence. Not in your sense of the word but in mine you are scheming to destroy me. You have as good as said that I am a married man—as a married man you will shun me keep out of my way just now you have refused to kiss me. You intend to make yourself a complete stranger to me to live under this roof only as Adèle’s governess if ever I say a friendly word to you if ever a friendly feeling inclines you again to me you will say—‘That man had nearly made me his mistress I must be ice and rock to him’ and ice and rock you will accordingly become. I cleared and steadied my voice to reply All is changed about me sir I must change too—there is no doubt of that and to avoid fluctuations of feeling and continual combats with recollections and associations there is only one way—Adèle must have a new governess sir. Oh Adèle will go to school—I have settled that already nor do I mean to torment you with the hideous associations and recollections of Thornfield Hall—this accursed place—this tent of Achan—this insolent vault offering the ghastliness of living death to the light of the open sky—this narrow stone hell with its one real fiend worse than a legion of such as we imagine. Jane you shall not stay here nor will I. I was wrong ever to bring you to Thornfield Hall knowing as I did how it was haunted. I charged them to conceal from you before I ever saw you all knowledge of the curse of the place merely because I feared Adèle never would have a governess to stay if she knew with what inmate she was housed and my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac elsewhere—though I possess an old house Ferndean Manor even more retired and hidden than this where I could have lodged her safely enough had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation in the heart of a wood made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge but to each villain his own vice and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination even of what I most hate. Concealing the mad-woman’s neighbourhood from you however was something like covering a child with a cloak and laying it down near a upas-tree that demon’s vicinage is poisoned and always was. But I’ll shut up Thornfield Hall I’ll nail up the front door and board the lower windows I’ll give Mrs Poole two hundred a year to live here with my wife as you term that fearful hag Grace will do much for money and she shall have her son the keeper at Grimsby Retreat to bear her company and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms when my wife is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night to stab them to bite their flesh from their bones and so on— Sir I interrupted him you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady you speak of her with hate—with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel—she cannot help being mad. Jane my little darling so I will call you for so you are you don’t know what you are talking about you misjudge me again it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad do you think I should hate you? I do indeed sir. Then you are mistaken and you know nothing about me and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure and if it were broken it would be my treasure still if you raved my arms should confine you and not a strait waistcoat—your grasp even in fury would have a charm for me if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning I should receive you in an embrace at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness though you gave me no smile in return and never weary of gazing into your eyes though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me.—But why do I follow that train of ideas? I was talking of removing you from Thornfield. All you know is prepared for prompt departure to-morrow you shall go. I only ask you to endure one more night under this roof Jane and then farewell to its miseries and terrors for ever! I have a place to repair to which will be a secure sanctuary from hateful reminiscences from unwelcome intrusion—even from falsehood and slander. And take Adèle with you sir I interrupted she will be a companion for you. What do you mean Jane? I told you I would send Adèle to school and what do I want with a child for a companion and not my own child—a French dancer’s bastard? Why do you importune me about her! I say why do you assign Adèle to me for a companion? You spoke of a retirement sir and retirement and solitude are dull too dull for you. Solitude! solitude! he reiterated with irritation. I see I must come to an explanation. I don’t know what sphynx-like expression is forming in your countenance. You are to share my solitude. Do you understand? I shook my head it required a degree of courage excited as he was becoming even to risk that mute sign of dissent. He had been walking fast about the room and he stopped as if suddenly rooted to one spot. He looked at me long and hard I turned my eyes from him fixed them on the fire and tried to assume and maintain a quiet collected aspect. Now for the hitch in Jane’s character he said at last speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle here it is. Now for vexation and exasperation and endless trouble! By God! I long to exert a fraction of Samson’s strength and break the entanglement like tow! He recommenced his walk but soon again stopped and this time just before me. Jane! will you hear reason? he stooped and approached his lips to my ear because if you won’t I’ll try violence. His voice was hoarse his look that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild license. I saw that in another moment and with one impetus of frenzy more I should be able to do nothing with him. The present—the passing second of time—was all I had in which to control and restrain him a movement of repulsion flight fear would have sealed my doom—and his. But I was not afraid not in the least. I felt an inward power a sense of influence which supported me. The crisis was perilous but not without its charm such as the Indian perhaps feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I took hold of his clenched hand loosened the contorted fingers and said to him soothingly— Sit down I’ll talk to you as long as you like and hear all you have to say whether reasonable or unreasonable. He sat down but he did not get leave to speak directly. I had been struggling with tears for some time I had taken great pains to repress them because I knew he would not like to see me weep. Now however I considered it well to let them flow as freely and as long as they liked. If the flood annoyed him so much the better. So I gave way and cried heartily. Soon I heard him earnestly entreating me to be composed. I said I could not while he was in such a passion. But I am not angry Jane I only love you too well and you had steeled your little pale face with such a resolute frozen look I could not endure it. Hush now and wipe your eyes. His softened voice announced that he was subdued so I in my turn became calm. Now he made an effort to rest his head on my shoulder but I would not permit it. Then he would draw me to him no. Jane! Jane! he said in such an accent of bitter sadness it thrilled along every nerve I had you don’t love me then? It was only my station and the rank of my wife that you valued? Now that you think me disqualified to become your husband you recoil from my touch as if I were some toad or ape. These words cut me yet what could I do or I say? I ought probably to have done or said nothing but I was so tortured by a sense of remorse at thus hurting his feelings I could not control the wish to drop balm where I had wounded. I do love you I said more than ever but I must not show or indulge the feeling and this is the last time I must express it. The last time Jane! What! do you think you can live with me and see me daily and yet if you still love me be always cold and distant? No sir that I am certain I could not and therefore I see there is but one way but you will be furious if I mention it. Oh mention it! If I storm you have the art of weeping. Mr Rochester I must leave you. For how long Jane? For a few minutes while you smooth your hair—which is somewhat dishevelled and bathe your face—which looks feverish? I must leave Adèle and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole life I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange scenes. Of course I told you you should. I pass over the madness about parting from me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to the new existence it is all right you shall yet be my wife I am not married. You shall be Mrs Rochester—both virtually and nominally. I shall keep only to you so long as you and I live. You shall go to a place I have in the south of France a whitewashed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. There you shall live a happy and guarded and most innocent life. Never fear that I wish to lure you into error—to make you my mistress. Why did you shake your head? Jane you must be reasonable or in truth I shall again become frantic. His voice and hand quivered his large nostrils dilated his eye blazed still I dared to speak. Sir your wife is living that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire I should then be your mistress to say otherwise is sophistical—is false. Jane I am not a gentle-tempered man—you forget that I am not long-enduring I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and yourself put your finger on my pulse feel how it throbs and—beware! He bared his wrist and offered it to me the blood was forsaking his cheek and lips they were growing livid I was distressed on all hands. To agitate him thus deeply by a resistance he so abhorred was cruel to yield was out of the question. I did what human beings do instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity—looked for aid to one higher than man the words God help me! burst involuntarily from my lips. I am a fool! cried Mr Rochester suddenly. I keep telling her I am not married and do not explain to her why. I forget she knows nothing of the character of that woman or of the circumstances attending my infernal union with her. Oh I am certain Jane will agree with me in opinion when she knows all that I know! Just put your hand in mine Janet—that I may have the evidence of touch as well as sight to prove you are near me—and I will in a few words show you the real state of the case. Can you listen to me? Yes sir for hours if you will. I ask only minutes. Jane did you ever hear or know that I was not the eldest son of my house that I had once a brother older than I? I remember Mrs Fairfax told me so once. And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious grasping man? I have understood something to that effect. Well Jane being so it was his resolution to keep the property together he could not bear the idea of dividing his estate and leaving me a fair portion all he resolved should go to my brother Rowland. Yet as little could he endure that a son of his should be a poor man. I must be provided for by a wealthy marriage. He sought me a partner betimes. Mr Mason a West India planter and merchant was his old acquaintance. He was certain his possessions were real and vast he made inquiries. Mr Mason he found had a son and daughter and he learned from him that he could and would give the latter a fortune of thirty thousand pounds that sufficed. When I left college I was sent out to Jamaica to espouse a bride already courted for me. My father said nothing about her money but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish Town for her beauty and this was no lie. I found her a fine woman in the style of Blanche Ingram tall dark and majestic. Her family wished to secure me because I was of a good race and so did she. They showed her to me in parties splendidly dressed. I seldom saw her alone and had very little private conversation with her. She flattered me and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and envy me. I was dazzled stimulated my senses were excited and being ignorant raw and inexperienced I thought I loved her. There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society the prurience the rashness the blindness of youth will not hurry a man to its commission. Her relatives encouraged me competitors piqued me she allured me a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was. Oh I have no respect for myself when I think of that act!—an agony of inward contempt masters me. I never loved I never esteemed I did not even know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature I had marked neither modesty nor benevolence nor candour nor refinement in her mind or manners—and I married her—gross grovelling mole-eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might have—But let me remember to whom I am speaking. My bride’s mother I had never seen I understood she was dead. The honeymoon over I learned my mistake she was only mad and shut up in a lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother too—a complete dumb idiot. The elder one whom you have seen and whom I cannot hate whilst I abhor all his kindred because he has some grains of affection in his feeble mind shown in the continued interest he takes in his wretched sister and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me will probably be in the same state one day. My father and my brother Rowland knew all this but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds and joined in the plot against me. These were vile discoveries but except for the treachery of concealment I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine her tastes obnoxious to me her cast of mind common low narrow and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher expanded to anything larger—when I found that I could not pass a single evening nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us because whatever topic I started immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite perverse and imbecile—when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper or the vexations of her absurd contradictory exacting orders—even then I restrained myself I eschewed upbraiding I curtailed remonstrance I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret I repressed the deep antipathy I felt. Jane I will not trouble you with abominable details some strong words shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman upstairs four years and before that time she had tried me indeed her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity her vices sprang up fast and rank they were so strong only cruelty could check them and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had and what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason the true daughter of an infamous mother dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste. My brother in the interval was dead and at the end of the four years my father died too. I was rich enough now—yet poor to hideous indigence a nature the most gross impure depraved I ever saw was associated with mine and called by the law and by society a part of me. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings for the doctors now discovered that my wife was mad—her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity. Jane you don’t like my narrative you look almost sick—shall I defer the rest to another day? No sir finish it now I pity you—I do earnestly pity you. Pity Jane from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it but that is the sort of pity native to callous selfish hearts it is a hybrid egotistical pain at hearing of woes crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not your pity Jane it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment—with which your eyes are now almost overflowing—with which your heart is heaving—with which your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity my darling is the suffering mother of love its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion. I accept it Jane let the daughter have free advent—my arms wait to receive her. Now sir proceed what did you do when you found she was mad? Jane I approached the verge of despair a remnant of self-respect was all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the world I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour but I resolved to be clean in my own sight—and to the last I repudiated the contamination of her crimes and wrenched myself from connection with her mental defects. Still society associated my name and person with hers I yet saw her and heard her daily something of her breath faugh! mixed with the air I breathed and besides I remembered I had once been her husband—that recollection was then and is now inexpressibly odious to me moreover I knew that while she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife and though five years my senior her family and her father had lied to me even in the particular of her age she was likely to live as long as I being as robust in frame as she was infirm in mind. Thus at the age of twenty-six I was hopeless. One night I had been awakened by her yells—since the medical men had pronounced her mad she had of course been shut up—it was a fiery West Indian night one of the description that frequently precede the hurricanes of those climates. Being unable to sleep in bed I got up and opened the window. The air was like sulphur-steams—I could find no refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room the sea which I could hear from thence rumbled dull like an earthquake—black clouds were casting up over it the moon was setting in the waves broad and red like a hot cannon-ball—she threw her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest. I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene and my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate with such language!—no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she though two rooms off I heard every word—the thin partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries. ‘This life’ said I at last ‘is hell this is the air—those are the sounds of the bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver myself from it if I can. The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. Of the fanatic’s burning eternity I have no fear there is not a future state worse than this present one—let me break away and go home to God!’ I said this whilst I knelt down at and unlocked a trunk which contained a brace of loaded pistols I meant to shoot myself. I only entertained the intention for a moment for not being insane the crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair which had originated the wish and design of self-destruction was past in a second. A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the open casement the storm broke streamed thundered blazed and the air grew pure. I then framed and fixed a resolution. While I walked under the dripping orange-trees of my wet garden and amongst its drenched pomegranates and pine-apples and while the refulgent dawn of the tropics kindled round me—I reasoned thus Jane—and now listen for it was true Wisdom that consoled me in that hour and showed me the right path to follow. The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed leaves and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty my heart dried up and scorched for a long time swelled to the tone and filled with living blood—my being longed for renewal—my soul thirsted for a pure draught. I saw hope revive—and felt regeneration possible. From a flowery arch at the bottom of my garden I gazed over the sea—bluer than the sky the old world was beyond clear prospects opened thus— ‘Go’ said Hope ‘and live again in Europe there it is not known what a sullied name you bear nor what a filthy burden is bound to you. You may take the maniac with you to England confine her with due attendance and precautions at Thornfield then travel yourself to what clime you will and form what new tie you like. That woman who has so abused your long-suffering so sullied your name so outraged your honour so blighted your youth is not your wife nor are you her husband. See that she is cared for as her condition demands and you have done all that God and humanity require of you. Let her identity her connection with yourself be buried in oblivion you are bound to impart them to no living being. Place her in safety and comfort shelter her degradation with secrecy and leave her.’ I acted precisely on this suggestion. My father and brother had not made my marriage known to their acquaintance because in the very first letter I wrote to apprise them of the union—having already begun to experience extreme disgust of its consequences and from the family character and constitution seeing a hideous future opening to me—I added an urgent charge to keep it secret and very soon the infamous conduct of the wife my father had selected for me was such as to make him blush to own her as his daughter-in-law. Far from desiring to publish the connection he became as anxious to conceal it as myself. To England then I conveyed her a fearful voyage I had with such a monster in the vessel. Glad was I when I at last got her to Thornfield and saw her safely lodged in that third-storey room of whose secret inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild beast’s den—a goblin’s cell. I had some trouble in finding an attendant for her as it was necessary to select one on whose fidelity dependence could be placed for her ravings would inevitably betray my secret besides she had lucid intervals of days—sometimes weeks—which she filled up with abuse of me. At last I hired Grace Poole from the Grimbsy Retreat. She and the surgeon Carter who dressed Mason’s wounds that night he was stabbed and worried are the only two I have ever admitted to my confidence. Mrs Fairfax may indeed have suspected something but she could have gained no precise knowledge as to facts. Grace has on the whole proved a good keeper though owing partly to a fault of her own of which it appears nothing can cure her and which is incident to her harassing profession her vigilance has been more than once lulled and baffled. The lunatic is both cunning and malignant she has never failed to take advantage of her guardian’s temporary lapses once to secrete the knife with which she stabbed her brother and twice to possess herself of the key of her cell and issue therefrom in the night-time. On the first of these occasions she perpetrated the attempt to burn me in my bed on the second she paid that ghastly visit to you. I thank Providence who watched over you that she then spent her fury on your wedding apparel which perhaps brought back vague reminiscences of her own bridal days but on what might have happened I cannot endure to reflect. When I think of the thing which flew at my throat this morning hanging its black and scarlet visage over the nest of my dove my blood curdles— And what sir I asked while he paused did you do when you had settled her here? Where did you go? What did I do Jane? I transformed myself into a will-o’-the-wisp. Where did I go? I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the March-spirit. I sought the Continent and went devious through all its lands. My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent woman whom I could love a contrast to the fury I left at Thornfield— But you could not marry sir. I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought. It was not my original intention to deceive as I have deceived you. I meant to tell my tale plainly and make my proposals openly and it appeared to me so absolutely rational that I should be considered free to love and be loved I never doubted some woman might be found willing and able to understand my case and accept me in spite of the curse with which I was burdened. Well sir? When you are inquisitive Jane you always make me smile. You open your eyes like an eager bird and make every now and then a restless movement as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you and you wanted to read the tablet of one’s heart. But before I go on tell me what you mean by your ‘Well sir?’ It is a small phrase very frequent with you and which many a time has drawn me on and on through interminable talk I don’t very well know why. I mean—What next? How did you proceed? What came of such an event? Precisely! and what do you wish to know now? Whether you found any one you liked whether you asked her to marry you and what she said. I can tell you whether I found any one I liked and whether I asked her to marry me but what she said is yet to be recorded in the book of Fate. For ten long years I roved about living first in one capital then another sometimes in St. Petersburg oftener in Paris occasionally in Rome Naples and Florence. Provided with plenty of money and the passport of an old name I could choose my own society no circles were closed against me. I sought my ideal of a woman amongst English ladies French countesses Italian signoras and German gräfinnen. I could not find her. Sometimes for a fleeting moment I thought I caught a glance heard a tone beheld a form which announced the realisation of my dream but I was presently undeceived. You are not to suppose that I desired perfection either of mind or person. I longed only for what suited me—for the antipodes of the Creole and I longed vainly. Amongst them all I found not one whom had I been ever so free I—warned as I was of the risks the horrors the loathings of incongruous unions—would have asked to marry me. Disappointment made me reckless. I tried dissipation—never debauchery that I hated and hate. That was my Indian Messalina’s attribute rooted disgust at it and her restrained me much even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to approach me to her and her vices and I eschewed it. Yet I could not live alone so I tried the companionship of mistresses. The first I chose was Céline Varens—another of those steps which make a man spurn himself when he recalls them. You already know what she was and how my liaison with her terminated. She had two successors an Italian Giacinta and a German Clara both considered singularly handsome. What was their beauty to me in a few weeks? Giacinta was unprincipled and violent I tired of her in three months. Clara was honest and quiet but heavy mindless and unimpressible not one whit to my taste. I was glad to give her a sufficient sum to set her up in a good line of business and so get decently rid of her. But Jane I see by your face you are not forming a very favourable opinion of me just now. You think me an unfeeling loose-principled rake don’t you? I don’t like you so well as I have done sometimes indeed sir. Did it not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way first with one mistress and then another? You talk of it as a mere matter of course. It was with me and I did not like it. It was a grovelling fashion of existence I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is the next worse thing to buying a slave both are often by nature and always by position inferior and to live familiarly with inferiors is degrading. I now hate the recollection of the time I passed with Céline Giacinta and Clara. I felt the truth of these words and I drew from them the certain inference that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching that had ever been instilled into me as—under any pretext—with any justification—through any temptation—to become the successor of these poor girls he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterance to this conviction it was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my heart that it might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of trial. Now Jane why don’t you say ‘Well sir?’ I have not done. You are looking grave. You disapprove of me still I see. But let me come to the point. Last January rid of all mistresses—in a harsh bitter frame of mind the result of a useless roving lonely life—corroded with disappointment sourly disposed against all men and especially against all womankind for I began to regard the notion of an intellectual faithful loving woman as a mere dream recalled by business I came back to England. On a frosty winter afternoon I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall. Abhorred spot! I expected no peace—no pleasure there. On a stile in Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself. I passed it as negligently as I did the pollard willow opposite to it I had no presentiment of what it would be to me no inward warning that the arbitress of my life—my genius for good or evil—waited there in humble guise. I did not know it even when on the occasion of Mesrour’s accident it came up and gravely offered me help. Childish and slender creature! It seemed as if a linnet had hopped to my foot and proposed to bear me on its tiny wing. I was surly but the thing would not go it stood by me with strange perseverance and looked and spoke with a sort of authority. I must be aided and by that hand and aided I was. When once I had pressed the frail shoulder something new—a fresh sap and sense—stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt that this elf must return to me—that it belonged to my house down below—or I could not have felt it pass away from under my hand and seen it vanish behind the dim hedge without singular regret. I heard you come home that night Jane though probably you were not aware that I thought of you or watched for you. The next day I observed you—myself unseen—for half-an-hour while you played with Adèle in the gallery. It was a snowy day I recollect and you could not go out of doors. I was in my room the door was ajar I could both listen and watch. Adèle claimed your outward attention for a while yet I fancied your thoughts were elsewhere but you were very patient with her my little Jane you talked to her and amused her a long time. When at last she left you you lapsed at once into deep reverie you betook yourself slowly to pace the gallery. Now and then in passing a casement you glanced out at the thick-falling snow you listened to the sobbing wind and again you paced gently on and dreamed. I think those day visions were not dark there was a pleasurable illumination in your eye occasionally a soft excitement in your aspect which told of no bitter bilious hypochondriac brooding your look revealed rather the sweet musings of youth when its spirit follows on willing wings the flight of Hope up and on to an ideal heaven. The voice of Mrs Fairfax speaking to a servant in the hall wakened you and how curiously you smiled to and at yourself Janet! There was much sense in your smile it was very shrewd and seemed to make light of your own abstraction. It seemed to say—‘My fine visions are all very well but I must not forget they are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain but without I am perfectly aware lies at my feet a rough tract to travel and around me gather black tempests to encounter.’ You ran downstairs and demanded of Mrs Fairfax some occupation the weekly house accounts to make up or something of that sort I think it was. I was vexed with you for getting out of my sight. Impatiently I waited for evening when I might summon you to my presence. An unusual—to me—a perfectly new character I suspected was yours I desired to search it deeper and know it better. You entered the room with a look and air at once shy and independent you were quaintly dressed—much as you are now. I made you talk ere long I found you full of strange contrasts. Your garb and manner were restricted by rule your air was often diffident and altogether that of one refined by nature but absolutely unused to society and a good deal afraid of making herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or blunder yet when addressed you lifted a keen a daring and a glowing eye to your interlocutor’s face there was penetration and power in each glance you gave when plied by close questions you found ready and round answers. Very soon you seemed to get used to me I believe you felt the existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross master Jane for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquillised your manner snarl as I would you showed no surprise fear annoyance or displeasure at my moroseness you watched me and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe. I was at once content and stimulated with what I saw I liked what I had seen and wished to see more. Yet for a long time I treated you distantly and sought your company rarely. I was an intellectual epicure and wished to prolong the gratification of making this novel and piquant acquaintance besides I was for a while troubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade—the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom but rather the radiant resemblance of one cut in an indestructible gem. Moreover I wished to see whether you would seek me if I shunned you—but you did not you kept in the schoolroom as still as your own desk and easel if by chance I met you you passed me as soon and with as little token of recognition as was consistent with respect. Your habitual expression in those days Jane was a thoughtful look not despondent for you were not sickly but not buoyant for you had little hope and no actual pleasure. I wondered what you thought of me or if you ever thought of me and resolved to find this out. I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your glance and genial in your manner when you conversed I saw you had a social heart it was the silent schoolroom—it was the tedium of your life—that made you mournful. I permitted myself the delight of being kind to you kindness stirred emotion soon your face became soft in expression your tones gentle I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful happy accent. I used to enjoy a chance meeting with you Jane at this time there was a curious hesitation in your manner you glanced at me with a slight trouble—a hovering doubt you did not know what my caprice might be—whether I was going to play the master and be stern or the friend and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to simulate the first whim and when I stretched my hand out cordially such bloom and light and bliss rose to your young wistful features I had much ado often to avoid straining you then and there to my heart. Don’t talk any more of those days sir I interrupted furtively dashing away some tears from my eyes his language was torture to me for I knew what I must do—and do soon—and all these reminiscences and these revelations of his feelings only made my work more difficult. No Jane he returned what necessity is there to dwell on the Past when the Present is so much surer—the Future so much brighter? I shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion. You see now how the case stands—do you not? he continued. After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good gifted lovely a fervent a solemn passion is conceived in my heart it leans to you draws you to my centre and spring of life wraps my existence about you and kindling in pure powerful flame fuses you and me in one. It was because I felt and knew this that I resolved to marry you. To tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery you know now that I had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early instilled prejudice I wanted to have you safe before hazarding confidences. This was cowardly I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first as I do now—opened to you plainly my life of agony—described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier existence—shown to you not my resolution that word is weak but my resistless bent to love faithfully and well where I am faithfully and well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity and to give me yours. Jane—give it me now. A pause. Why are you silent Jane? I was experiencing an ordeal a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment full of struggle blackness burning! Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped and I must renounce love and idol. One drear word comprised my intolerable duty—Depart! Jane you understand what I want of you? Just this promise—‘I will be yours Mr Rochester.’ Mr Rochester I will not be yours. Another long silence. Jane! recommenced he with a gentleness that broke me down with grief and turned me stone-cold with ominous terror—for this still voice was the pant of a lion rising—Jane do you mean to go one way in the world and to let me go another? I do. Jane bending towards and embracing me do you mean it now? I do. And now? softly kissing my forehead and cheek. I do extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely. Oh Jane this is bitter! This—this is wicked. It would not be wicked to love me. It would to obey you. A wild look raised his brows—crossed his features he rose but he forebore yet. I laid my hand on the back of a chair for support I shook I feared—but I resolved. One instant Jane. Give one glance to my horrible life when you are gone. All happiness will be torn away with you. What then is left? For a wife I have but the maniac upstairs as well might you refer me to some corpse in yonder churchyard. What shall I do Jane? Where turn for a companion and for some hope? Do as I do trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet again there. Then you will not yield? No. Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed? His voice rose. I advise you to live sinless and I wish you to die tranquil. Then you snatch love and innocence from me? You fling me back on lust for a passion—vice for an occupation? Mr Rochester I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself. We were born to strive and endure—you as well as I do so. You will forget me before I forget you. You make me a liar by such language you sully my honour. I declared I could not change you tell me to my face I shall change soon. And what a distortion in your judgment what a perversity in your ideas is proved by your conduct! Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law no man being injured by the breach? for you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me? This was true and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling and that clamoured wildly. Oh comply! it said. Think of his misery think of his danger—look at his state when left alone remember his headlong nature consider the recklessness following on despair—soothe him save him love him tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do? Still indomitable was the reply—I care for myself. The more solitary the more friendless the more unsustained I am the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation they are for such moments as this when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour stringent are they inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed and if I cannot believe it now it is because I am insane—quite insane with my veins running fire and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions foregone determinations are all I have at this hour to stand by there I plant my foot. I did. Mr Rochester reading my countenance saw I had done so. His fury was wrought to the highest he must yield to it for a moment whatever followed he crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped my waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance physically I felt at the moment powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace mentally I still possessed my soul and with it the certainty of ultimate safety. The soul fortunately has an interpreter—often an unconscious but still a truthful interpreter—in the eye. My eye rose to his and while I looked in his fierce face I gave an involuntary sigh his gripe was painful and my over-taxed strength almost exhausted. Never said he as he ground his teeth never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand! And he shook me with the force of his hold. I could bend her with my finger and thumb and what good would it do if I bent if I uptore if I crushed her? Consider that eye consider the resolute wild free thing looking out of it defying me with more than courage—with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage I cannot get at it—the savage beautiful creature! If I tear if I rend the slight prison my outrage will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you spirit—with will and energy and virtue and purity—that I want not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart if you would seized against your will you will elude the grasp like an essence—you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh! come Jane come! As he said this he released me from his clutch and only looked at me. The look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain only an idiot however would have succumbed now. I had dared and baffled his fury I must elude his sorrow I retired to the door. You are going Jane? I am going sir. You are leaving me? Yes. You will not come? You will not be my comforter my rescuer? My deep love my wild woe my frantic prayer are all nothing to you? What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to reiterate firmly I am going. Jane! Mr Rochester! Withdraw then—I consent but remember you leave me here in anguish. Go up to your own room think over all I have said and Jane cast a glance on my sufferings—think of me. He turned away he threw himself on his face on the sofa. Oh Jane! my hope—my love—my life! broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a deep strong sob. I had already gained the door but reader I walked back—walked back as determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him I turned his face from the cushion to me I kissed his cheek I smoothed his hair with my hand. God bless you my dear master! I said. God keep you from harm and wrong—direct you solace you—reward you well for your past kindness to me. Little Jane’s love would have been my best reward he answered without it my heart is broken. But Jane will give me her love yes—nobly generously. Up the blood rushed to his face forth flashed the fire from his eyes erect he sprang he held his arms out but I evaded the embrace and at once quitted the room. Farewell! was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added Farewell for ever! That night I never thought to sleep but a slumber fell on me as soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the scenes of childhood I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead that the night was dark and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long ago had struck me into syncope recalled in this vision seemed glidingly to mount the wall and tremblingly to pause in the centre of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head to look the roof resolved to clouds high and dim the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I watched her come—watched with the strangest anticipation as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk. She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved them away then not a moon but a white human form shone in the azure inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit immeasurably distant was the tone yet so near it whispered in my heart— My daughter flee temptation. Mother I will. So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. It was yet night but July nights are short soon after midnight dawn comes. It cannot be too early to commence the task I have to fulfil thought I. I rose I was dressed for I had taken off nothing but my shoes. I knew where to find in my drawers some linen a locket a ring. In seeking these articles I encountered the beads of a pearl necklace Mr Rochester had forced me to accept a few days ago. I left that it was not mine it was the visionary bride’s who had melted in air. The other articles I made up in a parcel my purse containing twenty shillings it was all I had I put in my pocket I tied on my straw bonnet pinned my shawl took the parcel and my slippers which I would not put on yet and stole from my room. Farewell kind Mrs Fairfax! I whispered as I glided past her door. Farewell my darling Adèle! I said as I glanced towards the nursery. No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace her. I had to deceive a fine ear for aught I knew it might now be listening. I would have got past Mr Rochester’s chamber without a pause but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold my foot was forced to stop also. No sleep was there the inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was a heaven—a temporary heaven—in this room for me if I chose I had but to go in and to say— Mr Rochester I will love you and live with you through life till death and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of this. That kind master who could not sleep now was waiting with impatience for day. He would send for me in the morning I should be gone. He would have me sought for vainly. He would feel himself forsaken his love rejected he would suffer perhaps grow desperate. I thought of this too. My hand moved towards the lock I caught it back and glided on. Drearily I wound my way downstairs I knew what I had to do and I did it mechanically. I sought the key of the side-door in the kitchen I sought too a phial of oil and a feather I oiled the key and the lock. I got some water I got some bread for perhaps I should have to walk far and my strength sorely shaken of late must not break down. All this I did without one sound. I opened the door passed out shut it softly. Dim dawn glimmered in the yard. The great gates were closed and locked but a wicket in one of them was only latched. Through that I departed it too I shut and now I was out of Thornfield. A mile off beyond the fields lay a road which stretched in the contrary direction to Millcote a road I had never travelled but often noticed and wondered where it led thither I bent my steps. No reflection was to be allowed now not one glance was to be cast back not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet—so deadly sad—that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank something like the world when the deluge was gone by. I skirted fields and hedges and lanes till after sunrise. I believe it was a lovely summer morning I know my shoes which I had put on when I left the house were soon wet with dew. But I looked neither to rising sun nor smiling sky nor wakening nature. He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road but of the block and axe-edge of the disseverment of bone and vein of the grave gaping at the end and I thought of drear flight and homeless wandering—and oh! with agony I thought of what I left. I could not help it. I thought of him now—in his room—watching the sunrise hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him and be his. I longed to be his I panted to return it was not too late I could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement. As yet my flight I was sure was undiscovered. I could go back and be his comforter—his pride his redeemer from misery perhaps from ruin. Oh that fear of his self-abandonment—far worse than my abandonment—how it goaded me! It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast it tore me when I tried to extract it it sickened me when remembrance thrust it farther in. Birds began singing in brake and copse birds were faithful to their mates birds were emblems of love. What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and frantic effort of principle I abhorred myself. I had no solace from self-approbation none even from self-respect. I had injured—wounded—left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes. Still I could not turn nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. As to my own will or conscience impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled the other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way fast fast I went like one delirious. A weakness beginning inwardly extending to the limbs seized me and I fell I lay on the ground some minutes pressing my face to the wet turf. I had some fear—or hope—that here I should die but I was soon up crawling forwards on my hands and knees and then again raised to my feet—as eager and as determined as ever to reach the road. When I got there I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge and while I sat I heard wheels and saw a coach come on. I stood up and lifted my hand it stopped. I asked where it was going the driver named a place a long way off and where I was sure Mr Rochester had no connections. I asked for what sum he would take me there he said thirty shillings I answered I had but twenty well he would try to make it do. He further gave me leave to get into the inside as the vehicle was empty I entered was shut in and it rolled on its way. Gentle reader may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy scalding heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in that hour left my lips for never may you like me dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love. ', 'Two days are passed. It is a summer evening the coachman has set me down at a place called Whitcross he could take me no farther for the sum I had given and I was not possessed of another shilling in the world. The coach is a mile off by this time I am alone. At this moment I discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of the coach where I had placed it for safety there it remains there it must remain and now I am absolutely destitute. Whitcross is no town nor even a hamlet it is but a stone pillar set up where four roads meet whitewashed I suppose to be more obvious at a distance and in darkness. Four arms spring from its summit the nearest town to which these point is according to the inscription distant ten miles the farthest above twenty. From the well-known names of these towns I learn in what county I have lighted a north-midland shire dusk with moorland ridged with mountain this I see. There are great moors behind and on each hand of me there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet. The population here must be thin and I see no passengers on these roads they stretch out east west north and south—white broad lonely they are all cut in the moor and the heather grows deep and wild to their very verge. Yet a chance traveller might pass by and I wish no eye to see me now strangers would wonder what I am doing lingering here at the sign-post evidently objectless and lost. I might be questioned I could give no answer but what would sound incredible and excite suspicion. Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment—not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are—none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no relative but the universal mother Nature I will seek her breast and ask repose. I struck straight into the heath I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside I waded knee-deep in its dark growth I turned with its turnings and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle I sat down under it. High banks of moor were about me the crag protected my head the sky was over that. Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here I had a vague dread that wild cattle might be near or that some sportsman or poacher might discover me. If a gust of wind swept the waste I looked up fearing it was the rush of a bull if a plover whistled I imagined it a man. Finding my apprehensions unfounded however and calmed by the deep silence that reigned as evening declined at nightfall I took confidence. As yet I had not thought I had only listened watched dreaded now I regained the faculty of reflection. What was I to do? Where to go? Oh intolerable questions when I could do nothing and go nowhere!—when a long way must yet be measured by my weary trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation—when cold charity must be entreated before I could get a lodging reluctant sympathy importuned almost certain repulse incurred before my tale could be listened to or one of my wants relieved! I touched the heath it was dry and yet warm with the heat of the summer day. I looked at the sky it was pure a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm ridge. The dew fell but with propitious softness no breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good I thought she loved me outcast as I was and I who from man could anticipate only mistrust rejection insult clung to her with filial fondness. To-night at least I would be her guest as I was her child my mother would lodge me without money and without price. I had one morsel of bread yet the remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed through at noon with a stray penny—my last coin. I saw ripe bilberries gleaming here and there like jet beads in the heath I gathered a handful and ate them with the bread. My hunger sharp before was if not satisfied appeased by this hermit’s meal. I said my evening prayers at its conclusion and then chose my couch. I said my evening prayers Beside the crag the heath was very deep when I lay down my feet were buried in it rising high on each side it left only a narrow space for the night-air to invade. I folded my shawl double and spread it over me for a coverlet a low mossy swell was my pillow. Thus lodged I was not at least at the commencement of the night cold. My rest might have been blissful enough only a sad heart broke it. It plained of its gaping wounds its inward bleeding its riven chords. It trembled for Mr Rochester and his doom it bemoaned him with bitter pity it demanded him with ceaseless longing and impotent as a bird with both wings broken it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him. Worn out with this torture of thought I rose to my knees. Night was come and her planets were risen a safe still night too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us and it is in the unclouded night-sky where His worlds wheel their silent course that we read clearest His infinitude His omnipotence His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr Rochester. Looking up I with tear-dimmed eyes saw the mighty Milky-way. Remembering what it was—what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light—I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made convinced I grew that neither earth should perish nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr Rochester was safe he was God’s and by God would he be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill and ere long in sleep forgot sorrow. But next day Want came to me pale and bare. Long after the little birds had left their nests long after bees had come in the sweet prime of day to gather the heath honey before the dew was dried—when the long morning shadows were curtailed and the sun filled earth and sky—I got up and I looked round me. What a still hot perfect day! What a golden desert this spreading moor! Everywhere sunshine. I wished I could live in it and on it. I saw a lizard run over the crag I saw a bee busy among the sweet bilberries. I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard that I might have found fitting nutriment permanent shelter here. But I was a human being and had a human being’s wants I must not linger where there was nothing to supply them. I rose I looked back at the bed I had left. Hopeless of the future I wished but this—that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept and that this weary frame absolved by death from further conflict with fate had now but to decay quietly and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness. Life however was yet in my possession with all its requirements and pains and responsibilities. The burden must be carried the want provided for the suffering endured the responsibility fulfilled. I set out. Whitcross regained I followed a road which led from the sun now fervent and high. By no other circumstance had I will to decide my choice. I walked a long time and when I thought I had nearly done enough and might conscientiously yield to the fatigue that almost overpowered me—might relax this forced action and sitting down on a stone I saw near submit resistlessly to the apathy that clogged heart and limb—I heard a bell chime—a church bell. I turned in the direction of the sound and there amongst the romantic hills whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago I saw a hamlet and a spire. All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture-fields and cornfields and wood and a glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varied shades of green the mellowing grain the sombre woodland the clear and sunny lea. Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill and not far beyond were two cows and their drover. Human life and human labour were near. I must struggle on strive to live and bend to toil like the rest. About two o’clock P.M. I entered the village. At the bottom of its one street there was a little shop with some cakes of bread in the window. I coveted a cake of bread. With that refreshment I could perhaps regain a degree of energy without it it would be difficult to proceed. The wish to have some strength and some vigour returned to me as soon as I was amongst my fellow-beings. I felt it would be degrading to faint with hunger on the causeway of a hamlet. Had I nothing about me I could offer in exchange for one of these rolls? I considered. I had a small silk handkerchief tied round my throat I had my gloves. I could hardly tell how men and women in extremities of destitution proceeded. I did not know whether either of these articles would be accepted probably they would not but I must try. I entered the shop a woman was there. Seeing a respectably-dressed person a lady as she supposed she came forward with civility. How could she serve me? I was seized with shame my tongue would not utter the request I had prepared. I dared not offer her the half-worn gloves the creased handkerchief besides I felt it would be absurd. I only begged permission to sit down a moment as I was tired. Disappointed in the expectation of a customer she coolly acceded to my request. She pointed to a seat I sank into it. I felt sorely urged to weep but conscious how unseasonable such a manifestation would be I restrained it. Soon I asked her if there were any dressmaker or plain-workwoman in the village? Yes two or three. Quite as many as there was employment for. I reflected. I was driven to the point now. I was brought face to face with Necessity. I stood in the position of one without a resource without a friend without a coin. I must do something. What? I must apply somewhere. Where? Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant was wanted? Nay she couldn’t say. What was the chief trade in this place? What did most of the people do? Some were farm labourers a good deal worked at Mr Oliver’s needle-factory and at the foundry. Did Mr Oliver employ women? Nay it was men’s work. And what do the women do? I knawn’t was the answer. Some does one thing and some another. Poor folk mun get on as they can. She seemed to be tired of my questions and indeed what claim had I to importune her? A neighbour or two came in my chair was evidently wanted. I took leave. I passed up the street looking as I went at all the houses to the right hand and to the left but I could discover no pretext nor see an inducement to enter any. I rambled round the hamlet going sometimes to a little distance and returning again for an hour or more. Much exhausted and suffering greatly now for want of food I turned aside into a lane and sat down under the hedge. Ere many minutes had elapsed I was again on my feet however and again searching something—a resource or at least an informant. A pretty little house stood at the top of the lane with a garden before it exquisitely neat and brilliantly blooming. I stopped at it. What business had I to approach the white door or touch the glittering knocker? In what way could it possibly be the interest of the inhabitants of that dwelling to serve me? Yet I drew near and knocked. A mild-looking cleanly-attired young woman opened the door. In such a voice as might be expected from a hopeless heart and fainting frame—a voice wretchedly low and faltering—I asked if a servant was wanted here? No said she we do not keep a servant. Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind? I continued. I am a stranger without acquaintance in this place. I want some work no matter what. But it was not her business to think for me or to seek a place for me besides in her eyes how doubtful must have appeared my character position tale. She shook her head she was sorry she could give me no information and the white door closed quite gently and civilly but it shut me out. If she had held it open a little longer I believe I should have begged a piece of bread for I was now brought low. I could not bear to return to the sordid village where besides no prospect of aid was visible. I should have longed rather to deviate to a wood I saw not far off which appeared in its thick shade to offer inviting shelter but I was so sick so weak so gnawed with nature’s cravings instinct kept me roaming round abodes where there was a chance of food. Solitude would be no solitude—rest no rest—while the vulture hunger thus sank beak and talons in my side. I drew near houses I left them and came back again and again I wandered away always repelled by the consciousness of having no claim to ask—no right to expect interest in my isolated lot. Meantime the afternoon advanced while I thus wandered about like a lost and starving dog. In crossing a field I saw the church spire before me I hastened towards it. Near the churchyard and in the middle of a garden stood a well-built though small house which I had no doubt was the parsonage. I remembered that strangers who arrive at a place where they have no friends and who want employment sometimes apply to the clergyman for introduction and aid. It is the clergyman’s function to help—at least with advice—those who wished to help themselves. I seemed to have something like a right to seek counsel here. Renewing then my courage and gathering my feeble remains of strength I pushed on. I reached the house and knocked at the kitchen-door. An old woman opened I asked was this the parsonage? Yes. Was the clergyman in? No. Would he be in soon? No he was gone from home. To a distance? Not so far—happen three mile. He had been called away by the sudden death of his father he was at Marsh End now and would very likely stay there a fortnight longer. Was there any lady of the house? Nay there was naught but her and she was housekeeper and of her reader I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I was sinking I could not yet beg and again I crawled away. Once more I took off my handkerchief—once more I thought of the cakes of bread in the little shop. Oh for but a crust! for but one mouthful to allay the pang of famine! Instinctively I turned my face again to the village I found the shop again and I went in and though others were there besides the woman I ventured the request—Would she give me a roll for this handkerchief? She looked at me with evident suspicion Nay she never sold stuff i’ that way. Almost desperate I asked for half a cake she again refused. How could she tell where I had got the handkerchief? she said. Would she take my gloves? No! what could she do with them? Reader it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude the moral degradation blent with the physical suffering form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on. I blamed none of those who repulsed me. I felt it was what was to be expected and what could not be helped an ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion a well-dressed beggar inevitably so. To be sure what I begged was employment but whose business was it to provide me with employment? Not certainly that of persons who saw me then for the first time and who knew nothing about my character. And as to the woman who would not take my handkerchief in exchange for her bread why she was right if the offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable. Let me condense now. I am sick of the subject. A little before dark I passed a farm-house at the open door of which the farmer was sitting eating his supper of bread and cheese. I stopped and said— Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry. He cast on me a glance of surprise but without answering he cut a thick slice from his loaf and gave it to me. I imagine he did not think I was a beggar but only an eccentric sort of lady who had taken a fancy to his brown loaf. As soon as I was out of sight of his house I sat down and ate it. I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof and sought it in the wood I have before alluded to. But my night was wretched my rest broken the ground was damp the air cold besides intruders passed near me more than once and I had again and again to change my quarters no sense of safety or tranquillity befriended me. Towards morning it rained the whole of the following day was wet. Do not ask me reader to give a minute account of that day as before I sought work as before I was repulsed as before I starved but once did food pass my lips. At the door of a cottage I saw a little girl about to throw a mess of cold porridge into a pig trough. Will you give me that? I asked. Will you give me that? I asked She stared at me. Mother! she exclaimed there is a woman wants me to give her these porridge. Well lass replied a voice within give it her if she’s a beggar. T’ pig doesn’t want it. The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand and I devoured it ravenously. As the wet twilight deepened I stopped in a solitary bridle-path which I had been pursuing an hour or more. My strength is quite failing me I said in a soliloquy. I feel I cannot go much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night? While the rain descends so must I lay my head on the cold drenched ground? I fear I cannot do otherwise for who will receive me? But it will be very dreadful with this feeling of hunger faintness chill and this sense of desolation—this total prostration of hope. In all likelihood though I should die before morning. And why cannot I reconcile myself to the prospect of death? Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life? Because I know or believe Mr Rochester is living and then to die of want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively. Oh Providence! sustain me a little longer! Aid!—direct me! My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape. I saw I had strayed far from the village it was quite out of sight. The very cultivation surrounding it had disappeared. I had by cross-ways and by-paths once more drawn near the tract of moorland and now only a few fields almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which they were scarcely reclaimed lay between me and the dusky hill. Well I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented road I reflected. And far better that crows and ravens—if any ravens there be in these regions—should pick my flesh from my bones than that they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper’s grave. To the hill then I turned. I reached it. It remained now only to find a hollow where I could lie down and feel at least hidden if not secure. But all the surface of the waste looked level. It showed no variation but of tint green where rush and moss overgrew the marshes black where the dry soil bore only heath. Dark as it was getting I could still see these changes though but as mere alternations of light and shade for colour had faded with the daylight. My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor-edge vanishing amidst the wildest scenery when at one dim point far in among the marshes and the ridges a light sprang up. That is an ignis fatuus was my first thought and I expected it would soon vanish. It burnt on however quite steadily neither receding nor advancing. Is it then a bonfire just kindled? I questioned. I watched to see whether it would spread but no as it did not diminish so it did not enlarge. It may be a candle in a house I then conjectured but if so I can never reach it. It is much too far away and were it within a yard of me what would it avail? I should but knock at the door to have it shut in my face. And I sank down where I stood and hid my face against the ground. I lay still a while the night-wind swept over the hill and over me and died moaning in the distance the rain fell fast wetting me afresh to the skin. Could I but have stiffened to the still frost—the friendly numbness of death—it might have pelted on I should not have felt it but my yet living flesh shuddered at its chilling influence. I rose ere long. The light was yet there shining dim but constant through the rain. I tried to walk again I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards it. It led me aslant over the hill through a wide bog which would have been impassable in winter and was splashy and shaking even now in the height of summer. Here I fell twice but as often I rose and rallied my faculties. This light was my forlorn hope I must gain it. Having crossed the marsh I saw a trace of white over the moor. I approached it it was a road or a track it led straight up to the light which now beamed from a sort of knoll amidst a clump of trees—firs apparently from what I could distinguish of the character of their forms and foliage through the gloom. My star vanished as I drew near some obstacle had intervened between me and it. I put out my hand to feel the dark mass before me I discriminated the rough stones of a low wall—above it something like palisades and within a high and prickly hedge. I groped on. Again a whitish object gleamed before me it was a gate—a wicket it moved on its hinges as I touched it. On each side stood a sable bush—holly or yew. Entering the gate and passing the shrubs the silhouette of a house rose to view black low and rather long but the guiding light shone nowhere. All was obscurity. Were the inmates retired to rest? I feared it must be so. In seeking the door I turned an angle there shot out the friendly gleam again from the lozenged panes of a very small latticed window within a foot of the ground made still smaller by the growth of ivy or some other creeping plant whose leaves clustered thick over the portion of the house wall in which it was set. The aperture was so screened and narrow that curtain or shutter had been deemed unnecessary and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of foliage shooting over it I could see all within. I could see clearly a room with a sanded floor clean scoured a dresser of walnut with pewter plates ranged in rows reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing peat-fire. I could see a clock a white deal table some chairs. The candle whose ray had been my beacon burnt on the table and by its light an elderly woman somewhat rough-looking but scrupulously clean like all about her was knitting a stocking. I noticed these objects cursorily only—in them there was nothing extraordinary. A group of more interest appeared near the hearth sitting still amidst the rosy peace and warmth suffusing it. Two young graceful women—ladies in every point—sat one in a low rocking-chair the other on a lower stool both wore deep mourning of crape and bombazeen which sombre garb singularly set off very fair necks and faces a large old pointer dog rested its massive head on the knee of one girl—in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat. A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants! Who were they? They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the table for she looked like a rustic and they were all delicacy and cultivation. I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs and yet as I gazed on them I seemed intimate with every lineament. I cannot call them handsome—they were too pale and grave for the word as they each bent over a book they looked thoughtful almost to severity. A stand between them supported a second candle and two great volumes to which they frequently referred comparing them seemingly with the smaller books they held in their hands like people consulting a dictionary to aid them in the task of translation. This scene was as silent as if all the figures had been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture so hushed was it I could hear the cinders fall from the grate the clock tick in its obscure corner and I even fancied I could distinguish the click-click of the woman’s knitting-needles. When therefore a voice broke the strange stillness at last it was audible enough to me. Listen Diana said one of the absorbed students Franz and old Daniel are together in the night-time and Franz is telling a dream from which he has awakened in terror—listen! And in a low voice she read something of which not one word was intelligible to me for it was in an unknown tongue—neither French nor Latin. Whether it were Greek or German I could not tell. That is strong she said when she had finished I relish it. The other girl who had lifted her head to listen to her sister repeated while she gazed at the fire a line of what had been read. At a later day I knew the language and the book therefore I will here quote the line though when I first heard it it was only like a stroke on sounding brass to me—conveying no meaning— ‘Da trat hervor Einer anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.’ Good! good! she exclaimed while her dark and deep eye sparkled. There you have a dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you! The line is worth a hundred pages of fustian. ‘Ich wäge die Gedanken in der Schale meines Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.’ I like it! Both were again silent. Is there ony country where they talk i’ that way? asked the old woman looking up from her knitting. Yes Hannah—a far larger country than England where they talk in no other way. Well for sure case I knawn’t how they can understand t’ one t’other and if either o’ ye went there ye could tell what they said I guess? We could probably tell something of what they said but not all—for we are not as clever as you think us Hannah. We don’t speak German and we cannot read it without a dictionary to help us. And what good does it do you? We mean to teach it some time—or at least the elements as they say and then we shall get more money than we do now. Varry like but give ower studying ye’ve done enough for to-night. I think we have at least I’m tired. Mary are you? Mortally after all it’s tough work fagging away at a language with no master but a lexicon. It is especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious Deutsch. I wonder when St. John will come home. Surely he will not be long now it is just ten looking at a little gold watch she drew from her girdle. It rains fast Hannah will you have the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour? The woman rose she opened a door through which I dimly saw a passage soon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room she presently came back. Ah childer! said she it fair troubles me to go into yond’ room now it looks so lonesome wi’ the chair empty and set back in a corner. She wiped her eyes with her apron the two girls grave before looked sad now. But he is in a better place continued Hannah we shouldn’t wish him here again. And then nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had. You say he never mentioned us? inquired one of the ladies. He hadn’t time bairn he was gone in a minute was your father. He had been a bit ailing like the day before but naught to signify and when Mr St. John asked if he would like either o’ ye to be sent for he fair laughed at him. He began again with a bit of a heaviness in his head the next day—that is a fortnight sin’—and he went to sleep and niver wakened he wor a’most stark when your brother went into t’ chamber and fand him. Ah childer! that’s t’ last o’ t’ old stock—for ye and Mr St. John is like of different soart to them ’at’s gone for all your mother wor mich i’ your way and a’most as book-learned. She wor the pictur’ o’ ye Mary Diana is more like your father. I thought them so similar I could not tell where the old servant for such I now concluded her to be saw the difference. Both were fair complexioned and slenderly made both possessed faces full of distinction and intelligence. One to be sure had hair a shade darker than the other and there was a difference in their style of wearing it Mary’s pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth Diana’s duskier tresses covered her neck with thick curls. The clock struck ten. Ye’ll want your supper I am sure observed Hannah and so will Mr St. John when he comes in. And she proceeded to prepare the meal. The ladies rose they seemed about to withdraw to the parlour. Till this moment I had been so intent on watching them their appearance and conversation had excited in me so keen an interest I had half-forgotten my own wretched position now it recurred to me. More desolate more desperate than ever it seemed from contrast. And how impossible did it appear to touch the inmates of this house with concern on my behalf to make them believe in the truth of my wants and woes—to induce them to vouchsafe a rest for my wanderings! As I groped out the door and knocked at it hesitatingly I felt that last idea to be a mere chimera. Hannah opened. What do you want? she inquired in a voice of surprise as she surveyed me by the light of the candle she held. May I speak to your mistresses? I said. You had better tell me what you have to say to them. Where do you come from? I am a stranger. What is your business here at this hour? I want a night’s shelter in an out-house or anywhere and a morsel of bread to eat. Distrust the very feeling I dreaded appeared in Hannah’s face. I’ll give you a piece of bread she said after a pause but we can’t take in a vagrant to lodge. It isn’t likely. Do let me speak to your mistresses. No not I. What can they do for you? You should not be roving about now it looks very ill. But where shall I go if you drive me away? What shall I do? Oh I’ll warrant you know where to go and what to do. Mind you don’t do wrong that’s all. Here is a penny now go— A penny cannot feed me and I have no strength to go farther. Don’t shut the door—oh don’t for God’s sake! I must the rain is driving in— Tell the young ladies. Let me see them— Indeed I will not. You are not what you ought to be or you wouldn’t make such a noise. Move off. But I must die if I am turned away. Not you. I’m fear’d you have some ill plans agate that bring you about folk’s houses at this time o’ night. If you’ve any followers—housebreakers or such like—anywhere near you may tell them we are not by ourselves in the house we have a gentleman and dogs and guns. Here the honest but inflexible servant clapped the door to and bolted it within. This was the climax. A pang of exquisite suffering—a throe of true despair—rent and heaved my heart. Worn out indeed I was not another step could I stir. I sank on the wet doorstep I groaned—I wrung my hands—I wept in utter anguish. Oh this spectre of death! Oh this last hour approaching in such horror! Alas this isolation—this banishment from my kind! Not only the anchor of hope but the footing of fortitude was gone—at least for a moment but the last I soon endeavoured to regain. I can but die I said and I believe in God. Let me try to wait His will in silence. These words I not only thought but uttered and thrusting back all my misery into my heart I made an effort to compel it to remain there—dumb and still. All men must die said a voice quite close at hand but all are not condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom such as yours would be if you perished here of want. Who or what speaks? I asked terrified at the unexpected sound and incapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid. A form was near—what form the pitch-dark night and my enfeebled vision prevented me from distinguishing. With a loud long knock the new-comer appealed to the door. Is it you Mr St. John? cried Hannah. Yes—yes open quickly. Well how wet and cold you must be such a wild night as it is! Come in—your sisters are quite uneasy about you and I believe there are bad folks about. There has been a beggar-woman—I declare she is not gone yet!—laid down there. Get up! for shame! Move off I say! Hush Hannah! I have a word to say to the woman. You have done your duty in excluding now let me do mine in admitting her. I was near and listened to both you and her. I think this is a peculiar case—I must at least examine into it. Young woman rise and pass before me into the house. Hush Hannah I have a word to say to the woman With difficulty I obeyed him. Presently I stood within that clean bright kitchen—on the very hearth—trembling sickening conscious of an aspect in the last degree ghastly wild and weather-beaten. The two ladies their brother Mr St. John the old servant were all gazing at me. St. John who is it? I heard one ask. I cannot tell I found her at the door was the reply. She does look white said Hannah. As white as clay or death was responded. She will fall let her sit. And indeed my head swam I dropped but a chair received me. I still possessed my senses though just now I could not speak. Perhaps a little water would restore her. Hannah fetch some. But she is worn to nothing. How very thin and how very bloodless! A mere spectre! Is she ill or only famished? Famished I think. Hannah is that milk? Give it me and a piece of bread. Diana I knew her by the long curls which I saw drooping between me and the fire as she bent over me broke some bread dipped it in milk and put it to my lips. Her face was near mine I saw there was pity in it and I felt sympathy in her hurried breathing. In her simple words too the same balm-like emotion spoke Try to eat. Yes—try repeated Mary gently and Mary’s hand removed my sodden bonnet and lifted my head. I tasted what they offered me feebly at first eagerly soon. Not too much at first—restrain her said the brother she has had enough. And he withdrew the cup of milk and the plate of bread. A little more St. John—look at the avidity in her eyes. No more at present sister. Try if she can speak now—ask her her name. I felt I could speak and I answered—My name is Jane Elliott. Anxious as ever to avoid discovery I had before resolved to assume an alias. And where do you live? Where are your friends? I was silent. Can we send for any one you know? I shook my head. What account can you give of yourself? Somehow now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house and once was brought face to face with its owners I felt no longer outcast vagrant and disowned by the wide world. I dared to put off the mendicant—to resume my natural manner and character. I began once more to know myself and when Mr St. John demanded an account—which at present I was far too weak to render—I said after a brief pause— Sir I can give you no details to-night. But what then said he do you expect me to do for you? Nothing I replied. My strength sufficed for but short answers. Diana took the word— Do you mean she asked that we have now given you what aid you require? and that we may dismiss you to the moor and the rainy night? I looked at her. She had I thought a remarkable countenance instinct both with power and goodness. I took sudden courage. Answering her compassionate gaze with a smile I said—I will trust you. If I were a masterless and stray dog I know that you would not turn me from your hearth to-night as it is I really have no fear. Do with me and for me as you like but excuse me from much discourse—my breath is short—I feel a spasm when I speak. All three surveyed me and all three were silent. Hannah said Mr St. John at last let her sit there at present and ask her no questions in ten minutes more give her the remainder of that milk and bread. Mary and Diana let us go into the parlour and talk the matter over. They withdrew. Very soon one of the ladies returned—I could not tell which. A kind of pleasant stupor was stealing over me as I sat by the genial fire. In an undertone she gave some directions to Hannah. Ere long with the servant’s aid I contrived to mount a staircase my dripping clothes were removed soon a warm dry bed received me. I thanked God—experienced amidst unutterable exhaustion a glow of grateful joy—and slept. ', 'The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is very dim in my mind. I can recall some sensations felt in that interval but few thoughts framed and no actions performed. I knew I was in a small room and in a narrow bed. To that bed I seemed to have grown I lay on it motionless as a stone and to have torn me from it would have been almost to kill me. I took no note of the lapse of time—of the change from morning to noon from noon to evening. I observed when any one entered or left the apartment I could even tell who they were I could understand what was said when the speaker stood near to me but I could not answer to open my lips or move my limbs was equally impossible. Hannah the servant was my most frequent visitor. Her coming disturbed me. I had a feeling that she wished me away that she did not understand me or my circumstances that she was prejudiced against me. Diana and Mary appeared in the chamber once or twice a day. They would whisper sentences of this sort at my bedside— It is very well we took her in. Yes she would certainly have been found dead at the door in the morning had she been left out all night. I wonder what she has gone through? Strange hardships I imagine—poor emaciated pallid wanderer! She is not an uneducated person I should think by her manner of speaking her accent was quite pure and the clothes she took off though splashed and wet were little worn and fine. She has a peculiar face fleshless and haggard as it is I rather like it and when in good health and animated I can fancy her physiognomy would be agreeable. Never once in their dialogues did I hear a syllable of regret at the hospitality they had extended to me or of suspicion of or aversion to myself. I was comforted. Mr St. John came but once he looked at me and said my state of lethargy was the result of reaction from excessive and protracted fatigue. He pronounced it needless to send for a doctor nature he was sure would manage best left to herself. He said every nerve had been overstrained in some way and the whole system must sleep torpid a while. There was no disease. He imagined my recovery would be rapid enough when once commenced. These opinions he delivered in a few words in a quiet low voice and added after a pause in the tone of a man little accustomed to expansive comment Rather an unusual physiognomy certainly not indicative of vulgarity or degradation. Far otherwise responded Diana. To speak truth St. John my heart rather warms to the poor little soul. I wish we may be able to benefit her permanently. That is hardly likely was the reply. You will find she is some young lady who has had a misunderstanding with her friends and has probably injudiciously left them. We may perhaps succeed in restoring her to them if she is not obstinate but I trace lines of force in her face which make me sceptical of her tractability. He stood considering me some minutes then added She looks sensible but not at all handsome. She is so ill St. John. Ill or well she would always be plain. The grace and harmony of beauty are quite wanting in those features. On the third day I was better on the fourth I could speak move rise in bed and turn. Hannah had brought me some gruel and dry toast about as I supposed the dinner-hour. I had eaten with relish the food was good—void of the feverish flavour which had hitherto poisoned what I had swallowed. When she left me I felt comparatively strong and revived ere long satiety of repose and desire for action stirred me. I wished to rise but what could I put on? Only my damp and bemired apparel in which I had slept on the ground and fallen in the marsh. I felt ashamed to appear before my benefactors so clad. I was spared the humiliation. On a chair by the bedside were all my own things clean and dry. My black silk frock hung against the wall. The traces of the bog were removed from it the creases left by the wet smoothed out it was quite decent. My very shoes and stockings were purified and rendered presentable. There were the means of washing in the room and a comb and brush to smooth my hair. After a weary process and resting every five minutes I succeeded in dressing myself. My clothes hung loose on me for I was much wasted but I covered deficiencies with a shawl and once more clean and respectable looking—no speck of the dirt no trace of the disorder I so hated and which seemed so to degrade me left—I crept down a stone staircase with the aid of the banisters to a narrow low passage and found my way presently to the kitchen. It was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a generous fire. Hannah was baking. Prejudices it is well known are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education they grow there firm as weeds among stones. Hannah had been cold and stiff indeed at the first latterly she had begun to relent a little and when she saw me come in tidy and well-dressed she even smiled. What you have got up! she said. You are better then. You may sit you down in my chair on the hearthstone if you will. She pointed to the rocking-chair I took it. She bustled about examining me every now and then with the corner of her eye. Turning to me as she took some loaves from the oven she asked bluntly— Did you ever go a-begging afore you came here? I was indignant for a moment but remembering that anger was out of the question and that I had indeed appeared as a beggar to her I answered quietly but still not without a certain marked firmness— You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar. I am no beggar any more than yourself or your young ladies. After a pause she said I dunnut understand that you’ve like no house nor no brass I guess? The want of house or brass by which I suppose you mean money does not make a beggar in your sense of the word. Are you book-learned? she inquired presently. Yes very. But you’ve never been to a boarding-school? I was at a boarding-school eight years. She opened her eyes wide. Whatever cannot ye keep yourself for then? I have kept myself and I trust shall keep myself again. What are you going to do with these gooseberries? I inquired as she brought out a basket of the fruit. Mak’ ’em into pies. Give them to me and I’ll pick them. Nay I dunnut want ye to do nought. But I must do something. Let me have them. She consented and she even brought me a clean towel to spread over my dress lest as she said I should mucky it. Ye’ve not been used to sarvant’s wark I see by your hands she remarked. Happen ye’ve been a dressmaker? No you are wrong. And now never mind what I have been don’t trouble your head further about me but tell me the name of the house where we are. Some calls it Marsh End and some calls it Moor House. And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr St. John? Nay he doesn’t live here he is only staying a while. When he is at home he is in his own parish at Morton. That village a few miles off? Aye. And what is he? He is a parson. I remembered the answer of the old housekeeper at the parsonage when I had asked to see the clergyman. This then was his father’s residence? Aye old Mr Rivers lived here and his father and grandfather and gurt great grandfather afore him. The name then of that gentleman is Mr St. John Rivers? Aye St. John is like his kirstened name. And his sisters are called Diana and Mary Rivers? Yes. Their father is dead? Dead three weeks sin’ of a stroke. They have no mother? The mistress has been dead this mony a year. Have you lived with the family long? I’ve lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three. That proves you must have been an honest and faithful servant. I will say so much for you though you have had the incivility to call me a beggar. She again regarded me with a surprised stare. I believe she said I was quite mista’en in my thoughts of you but there is so mony cheats goes about you mun forgie me. And though I continued rather severely you wished to turn me from the door on a night when you should not have shut out a dog. Well it was hard but what can a body do? I thought more o’ th’ childer nor of mysel poor things! They’ve like nobody to tak’ care on ’em but me. I’m like to look sharpish. I maintained a grave silence for some minutes. You munnut think too hardly of me she again remarked. But I do think hardly of you I said and I’ll tell you why—not so much because you refused to give me shelter or regarded me as an impostor as because you just now made it a species of reproach that I had no ‘brass’ and no house. Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am and if you are a Christian you ought not to consider poverty a crime. No more I ought said she Mr St. John tells me so too and I see I wor wrang—but I’ve clear a different notion on you now to what I had. You look a raight down dacent little crater. That will do—I forgive you now. Shake hands. She put her floury and horny hand into mine another and heartier smile illumined her rough face and from that moment we were friends. Hannah was evidently fond of talking. While I picked the fruit and she made the paste for the pies she proceeded to give me sundry details about her deceased master and mistress and the childer as she called the young people. Old Mr Rivers she said was a plain man enough but a gentleman and of as ancient a family as could be found. Marsh End had belonged to the Rivers ever since it was a house and it was she affirmed aboon two hundred year old—for all it looked but a small humble place naught to compare wi’ Mr Oliver’s grand hall down i’ Morton Vale. But she could remember Bill Oliver’s father a journeyman needlemaker and th’ Rivers wor gentry i’ th’ owd days o’ th’ Henrys as onybody might see by looking into th’ registers i’ Morton Church vestry. Still she allowed the owd maister was like other folk—naught mich out o’ t’ common way stark mad o’ shooting and farming and sich like. The mistress was different. She was a great reader and studied a deal and the bairns had taken after her. There was nothing like them in these parts nor ever had been they had liked learning all three almost from the time they could speak and they had always been of a mak’ of their own. Mr St. John when he grew up would go to college and be a parson and the girls as soon as they left school would seek places as governesses for they had told her their father had some years ago lost a great deal of money by a man he had trusted turning bankrupt and as he was now not rich enough to give them fortunes they must provide for themselves. They had lived very little at home for a long while and were only come now to stay a few weeks on account of their father’s death but they did so like Marsh End and Morton and all these moors and hills about. They had been in London and many other grand towns but they always said there was no place like home and then they were so agreeable with each other—never fell out nor threaped. She did not know where there was such a family for being united. Having finished my task of gooseberry picking I asked where the two ladies and their brother were now. Gone over to Morton for a walk but they would be back in half-an-hour to tea. They returned within the time Hannah had allotted them they entered by the kitchen door. Mr St. John when he saw me merely bowed and passed through the two ladies stopped Mary in a few words kindly and calmly expressed the pleasure she felt in seeing me well enough to be able to come down Diana took my hand she shook her head at me. You should have waited for my leave to descend she said. You still look very pale—and so thin! Poor child!—poor girl! Diana had a voice toned to my ear like the cooing of a dove. She possessed eyes whose gaze I delighted to encounter. Her whole face seemed to me full of charm. Mary’s countenance was equally intelligent—her features equally pretty but her expression was more reserved and her manners though gentle more distant. Diana looked and spoke with a certain authority she had a will evidently. It was my nature to feel pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like hers and to bend where my conscience and self-respect permitted to an active will. And what business have you here? she continued. It is not your place. Mary and I sit in the kitchen sometimes because at home we like to be free even to license—but you are a visitor and must go into the parlour. I am very well here. Not at all with Hannah bustling about and covering you with flour. Besides the fire is too hot for you interposed Mary. To be sure added her sister. Come you must be obedient. And still holding my hand she made me rise and led me into the inner room. Sit there she said placing me on the sofa while we take our things off and get the tea ready it is another privilege we exercise in our little moorland home—to prepare our own meals when we are so inclined or when Hannah is baking brewing washing or ironing. She closed the door leaving me solus with Mr St. John who sat opposite a book or newspaper in his hand. I examined first the parlour and then its occupant. The parlour was rather a small room very plainly furnished yet comfortable because clean and neat. The old-fashioned chairs were very bright and the walnut-wood table was like a looking-glass. A few strange antique portraits of the men and women of other days decorated the stained walls a cupboard with glass doors contained some books and an ancient set of china. There was no superfluous ornament in the room—not one modern piece of furniture save a brace of workboxes and a lady’s desk in rosewood which stood on a side-table everything—including the carpet and curtains—looked at once well worn and well saved. Mr St. John—sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on the walls keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused and his lips mutely sealed—was easy enough to examine. Had he been a statue instead of a man he could not have been easier. He was young—perhaps from twenty-eight to thirty—tall slender his face riveted the eye it was like a Greek face very pure in outline quite a straight classic nose quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom indeed an English face comes so near the antique models as did his. He might well be a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments his own being so harmonious. His eyes were large and blue with brown lashes his high forehead colourless as ivory was partially streaked over by careless locks of fair hair. This is a gentle delineation is it not reader? Yet he whom it describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle a yielding an impressible or even of a placid nature. Quiescent as he now sat there was something about his nostril his mouth his brow which to my perceptions indicated elements within either restless or hard or eager. He did not speak to me one word nor even direct to me one glance till his sisters returned. Diana as she passed in and out in the course of preparing tea brought me a little cake baked on the top of the oven. Eat that now she said you must be hungry. Hannah says you have had nothing but some gruel since breakfast. I did not refuse it for my appetite was awakened and keen. Mr Rivers now closed his book approached the table and as he took a seat fixed his blue pictorial-looking eyes full on me. There was an unceremonious directness a searching decided steadfastness in his gaze now which told that intention and not diffidence had hitherto kept it averted from the stranger. You are very hungry he said. I am sir. It is my way—it always was my way by instinct—ever to meet the brief with brevity the direct with plainness. It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the last three days there would have been danger in yielding to the cravings of your appetite at first. Now you may eat though still not immoderately. I trust I shall not eat long at your expense sir was my very clumsily-contrived unpolished answer. No he said coolly when you have indicated to us the residence of your friends we can write to them and you may be restored to home. That I must plainly tell you is out of my power to do being absolutely without home and friends. The three looked at me but not distrustfully I felt there was no suspicion in their glances there was more of curiosity. I speak particularly of the young ladies. St. John’s eyes though clear enough in a literal sense in a figurative one were difficult to fathom. He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people’s thoughts than as agents to reveal his own the which combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to embarrass than to encourage. Do you mean to say he asked that you are completely isolated from every connection? I do. Not a tie links me to any living thing not a claim do I possess to admittance under any roof in England. A most singular position at your age! Here I saw his glance directed to my hands which were folded on the table before me. I wondered what he sought there his words soon explained the quest. You have never been married? You are a spinster? Diana laughed. Why she can’t be above seventeen or eighteen years old St. John said she. I am near nineteen but I am not married. No. I felt a burning glow mount to my face for bitter and agitating recollections were awakened by the allusion to marriage. They all saw the embarrassment and the emotion. Diana and Mary relieved me by turning their eyes elsewhere than to my crimsoned visage but the colder and sterner brother continued to gaze till the trouble he had excited forced out tears as well as colour. Where did you last reside? he now asked. You are too inquisitive St. John murmured Mary in a low voice but he leaned over the table and required an answer by a second firm and piercing look. The name of the place where and of the person with whom I lived is my secret I replied concisely. Which if you like you have in my opinion a right to keep both from St. John and every other questioner remarked Diana. Yet if I know nothing about you or your history I cannot help you he said. And you need help do you not? I need it and I seek it so far sir that some true philanthropist will put me in the way of getting work which I can do and the remuneration for which will keep me if but in the barest necessaries of life. I know not whether I am a true philanthropist yet I am willing to aid you to the utmost of my power in a purpose so honest. First then tell me what you have been accustomed to do and what you can do. I had now swallowed my tea. I was mightily refreshed by the beverage as much so as a giant with wine it gave new tone to my unstrung nerves and enabled me to address this penetrating young judge steadily. Mr Rivers I said turning to him and looking at him as he looked at me openly and without diffidence you and your sisters have done me a great service—the greatest man can do his fellow-being you have rescued me by your noble hospitality from death. This benefit conferred gives you an unlimited claim on my gratitude and a claim to a certain extent on my confidence. I will tell you as much of the history of the wanderer you have harboured as I can tell without compromising my own peace of mind—my own security moral and physical and that of others. I am an orphan the daughter of a clergyman. My parents died before I could know them. I was brought up a dependent educated in a charitable institution. I will even tell you the name of the establishment where I passed six years as a pupil and two as a teacher—Lowood Orphan Asylum ——shire you will have heard of it Mr Rivers?—the Rev. Robert Brocklehurst is the treasurer. I have heard of Mr Brocklehurst and I have seen the school. I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess. I obtained a good situation and was happy. This place I was obliged to leave four days before I came here. The reason of my departure I cannot and ought not to explain it would be useless dangerous and would sound incredible. No blame attached to me I am as free from culpability as any one of you three. Miserable I am and must be for a time for the catastrophe which drove me from a house I had found a paradise was of a strange and direful nature. I observed but two points in planning my departure—speed secrecy to secure these I had to leave behind me everything I possessed except a small parcel which in my hurry and trouble of mind I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me to Whitcross. To this neighbourhood then I came quite destitute. I slept two nights in the open air and wandered about two days without crossing a threshold but twice in that space of time did I taste food and it was when brought by hunger exhaustion and despair almost to the last gasp that you Mr Rivers forbade me to perish of want at your door and took me under the shelter of your roof. I know all your sisters have done for me since—for I have not been insensible during my seeming torpor—and I owe to their spontaneous genuine genial compassion as large a debt as to your evangelical charity. Don’t make her talk any more now St. John said Diana as I paused she is evidently not yet fit for excitement. Come to the sofa and sit down now Miss Elliott. I gave an involuntary half start at hearing the alias I had forgotten my new name. Mr Rivers whom nothing seemed to escape noticed it at once. You said your name was Jane Elliott? he observed. I did say so and it is the name by which I think it expedient to be called at present but it is not my real name and when I hear it it sounds strange to me. Your real name you will not give? No I fear discovery above all things and whatever disclosure would lead to it I avoid. You are quite right I am sure said Diana. Now do brother let her be at peace a while. But when St. John had mused a few moments he recommenced as imperturbably and with as much acumen as ever. You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality—you would wish I see to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters’ compassion and above all with my charity I am quite sensible of the distinction drawn nor do I resent it—it is just you desire to be independent of us? I do I have already said so. Show me how to work or how to seek work that is all I now ask then let me go if it be but to the meanest cottage but till then allow me to stay here I dread another essay of the horrors of homeless destitution. Indeed you shall stay here said Diana putting her white hand on my head. You shall repeated Mary in the tone of undemonstrative sincerity which seemed natural to her. My sisters you see have a pleasure in keeping you said Mr St. John as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a half-frozen bird some wintry wind might have driven through their casement. I feel more inclination to put you in the way of keeping yourself and shall endeavour to do so but observe my sphere is narrow. I am but the incumbent of a poor country parish my aid must be of the humblest sort. And if you are inclined to despise the day of small things seek some more efficient succour than such as I can offer. She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest she can do answered Diana for me and you know St. John she has no choice of helpers she is forced to put up with such crusty people as you. I will be a dressmaker I will be a plain-workwoman I will be a servant a nurse-girl if I can be no better I answered. Right said Mr St. John quite coolly. If such is your spirit I promise to aid you in my own time and way. He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea. I soon withdrew for I had talked as much and sat up as long as my present strength would permit. ', 'The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House the better I liked them. In a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all their occupations converse with them as much as they wished and aid them when and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure in this intercourse of a kind now tasted by me for the first time—the pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes sentiments and principles. I liked to read what they liked to read what they enjoyed delighted me what they approved I reverenced. They loved their sequestered home. I too in the grey small antique structure with its low roof its latticed casements its mouldering walls its avenue of aged firs—all grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds its garden dark with yew and holly—and where no flowers but of the hardiest species would bloom—found a charm both potent and permanent. They clung to the purple moors behind and around their dwelling—to the hollow vale into which the pebbly bridle-path leading from their gate descended and which wound between fern-banks first and then amongst a few of the wildest little pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath or gave sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep with their little mossy-faced lambs—they clung to this scene I say with a perfect enthusiasm of attachment. I could comprehend the feeling and share both its strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality. I felt the consecration of its loneliness my eye feasted on the outline of swell and sweep—on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell by moss by heath-bell by flower-sprinkled turf by brilliant bracken and mellow granite crag. These details were just to me what they were to them—so many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast and the soft breeze the rough and the halcyon day the hours of sunrise and sunset the moonlight and the clouded night developed for me in these regions the same attraction as for them—wound round my faculties the same spell that entranced theirs. Indoors we agreed equally well. They were both more accomplished and better read than I was but with eagerness I followed in the path of knowledge they had trodden before me. I devoured the books they lent me then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in the evening what I had perused during the day. Thought fitted thought opinion met opinion we coincided in short perfectly. If in our trio there was a superior and a leader it was Diana. Physically she far excelled me she was handsome she was vigorous. In her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty of flow such as excited my wonder while it baffled my comprehension. I could talk a while when the evening commenced but the first gush of vivacity and fluency gone I was fain to sit on a stool at Diana’s feet to rest my head on her knee and listen alternately to her and Mary while they sounded thoroughly the topic on which I had but touched. Diana offered to teach me German. I liked to learn of her I saw the part of instructress pleased and suited her that of scholar pleased and suited me no less. Our natures dovetailed mutual affection—of the strongest kind—was the result. They discovered I could draw their pencils and colour-boxes were immediately at my service. My skill greater in this one point than theirs surprised and charmed them. Mary would sit and watch me by the hour together then she would take lessons and a docile intelligent assiduous pupil she made. Thus occupied and mutually entertained days passed like hours and weeks like days. As to Mr St John the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and rapidly between me and his sisters did not extend to him. One reason of the distance yet observed between us was that he was comparatively seldom at home a large proportion of his time appeared devoted to visiting the sick and poor among the scattered population of his parish. No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions rain or fair he would when his hours of morning study were over take his hat and followed by his father’s old pointer Carlo go out on his mission of love or duty—I scarcely know in which light he regarded it. Sometimes when the day was very unfavourable his sisters would expostulate. He would then say with a peculiar smile more solemn than cheerful— And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from these easy tasks what preparation would such sloth be for the future I propose to myself? Diana and Mary’s general answer to this question was a sigh and some minutes of apparently mournful meditation. But besides his frequent absences there was another barrier to friendship with him he seemed of a reserved an abstracted and even of a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labours blameless in his life and habits he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity that inward content which should be the reward of every sincere Christian and practical philanthropist. Often of an evening when he sat at the window his desk and papers before him he would cease reading or writing rest his chin on his hand and deliver himself up to I know not what course of thought but that it was perturbed and exciting might be seen in the frequent flash and changeful dilation of his eye. I think moreover that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight it was to his sisters. He expressed once and but once in my hearing a strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills and an inborn affection for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home but there was more of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the sentiment was manifested and never did he seem to roam the moors for the sake of their soothing silence—never seek out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful delights they could yield. Incommunicative as he was some time elapsed before I had an opportunity of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its calibre when I heard him preach in his own church at Morton. I wish I could describe that sermon but it is past my power. I cannot even render faithfully the effect it produced on me. It began calm—and indeed as far as delivery and pitch of voice went it was calm to the end an earnestly felt yet strictly restrained zeal breathed soon in the distinct accents and prompted the nervous language. This grew to force—compressed condensed controlled. The heart was thrilled the mind astonished by the power of the preacher neither were softened. Throughout there was a strange bitterness an absence of consolatory gentleness stern allusions to Calvinistic doctrines—election predestination reprobation—were frequent and each reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom. When he had done instead of feeling better calmer more enlightened by his discourse I experienced an inexpressible sadness for it seemed to me—I know not whether equally so to others—that the eloquence to which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of disappointment—where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers—pure-lived conscientious zealous as he was—had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all understanding he had no more found it I thought than had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost elysium—regrets to which I have latterly avoided referring but which possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly. Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor House and return to the far different life and scene which awaited them as governesses in a large fashionable south-of-England city where each held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty members they were regarded only as humble dependents and who neither knew nor sought out their innate excellences and appreciated only their acquired accomplishments as they appreciated the skill of their cook or the taste of their waiting-woman. Mr St. John had said nothing to me yet about the employment he had promised to obtain for me yet it became urgent that I should have a vocation of some kind. One morning being left alone with him a few minutes in the parlour I ventured to approach the window-recess—which his table chair and desk consecrated as a kind of study—and I was going to speak though not very well knowing in what words to frame my inquiry—for it is at all times difficult to break the ice of reserve glassing over such natures as his—when he saved me the trouble by being the first to commence a dialogue. Looking up as I drew near—You have a question to ask of me? he said. Yes I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can offer myself to undertake? I found or devised something for you three weeks ago but as you seemed both useful and happy here—as my sisters had evidently become attached to you and your society gave them unusual pleasure—I deemed it inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till their approaching departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary. And they will go in three days now? I said. Yes and when they go I shall return to the parsonage at Morton Hannah will accompany me and this old house will be shut up. I waited a few moments expecting he would go on with the subject first broached but he seemed to have entered another train of reflection his look denoted abstraction from me and my business. I was obliged to recall him to a theme which was of necessity one of close and anxious interest to me. What is the employment you had in view Mr Rivers? I hope this delay will not have increased the difficulty of securing it. Oh no since it is an employment which depends only on me to give and you to accept. He again paused there seemed a reluctance to continue. I grew impatient a restless movement or two and an eager and exacting glance fastened on his face conveyed the feeling to him as effectually as words could have done and with less trouble. You need be in no hurry to hear he said let me frankly tell you I have nothing eligible or profitable to suggest. Before I explain recall if you please my notice clearly given that if I helped you it must be as the blind man would help the lame. I am poor for I find that when I have paid my father’s debts all the patrimony remaining to me will be this crumbling grange the row of scathed firs behind and the patch of moorish soil with the yew-trees and holly-bushes in front. I am obscure Rivers is an old name but of the three sole descendants of the race two earn the dependent’s crust among strangers and the third considers himself an alien from his native country—not only for life but in death. Yes and deems and is bound to deem himself honoured by the lot and aspires but after the day when the cross of separation from fleshly ties shall be laid on his shoulders and when the Head of that church-militant of whose humblest members he is one shall give the word ‘Rise follow Me!’ St. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons with a quiet deep voice with an unflushed cheek and a coruscating radiance of glance. He resumed— And since I am myself poor and obscure I can offer you but a service of poverty and obscurity. You may even think it degrading—for I see now your habits have been what the world calls refined your tastes lean to the ideal and your society has at least been amongst the educated but I consider that no service degrades which can better our race. I hold that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the Christian labourer’s task of tillage is appointed him—the scantier the meed his toil brings—the higher the honour. His under such circumstances is the destiny of the pioneer and the first pioneers of the Gospel were the Apostles—their captain was Jesus the Redeemer Himself. Well? I said as he again paused—proceed. He looked at me before he proceeded indeed he seemed leisurely to read my face as if its features and lines were characters on a page. The conclusions drawn from this scrutiny he partially expressed in his succeeding observations. I believe you will accept the post I offer you said he and hold it for a while not permanently though any more than I could permanently keep the narrow and narrowing—the tranquil hidden office of English country incumbent for in your nature is an alloy as detrimental to repose as that in mine though of a different kind. Do explain I urged when he halted once more. I will and you shall hear how poor the proposal is—how trivial—how cramping. I shall not stay long at Morton now that my father is dead and that I am my own master. I shall leave the place probably in the course of a twelve-month but while I do stay I will exert myself to the utmost for its improvement. Morton when I came to it two years ago had no school the children of the poor were excluded from every hope of progress. I established one for boys I mean now to open a second school for girls. I have hired a building for the purpose with a cottage of two rooms attached to it for the mistress’s house. Her salary will be thirty pounds a year her house is already furnished very simply but sufficiently by the kindness of a lady Miss Oliver the only daughter of the sole rich man in my parish—Mr Oliver the proprietor of a needle-factory and iron-foundry in the valley. The same lady pays for the education and clothing of an orphan from the workhouse on condition that she shall aid the mistress in such menial offices connected with her own house and the school as her occupation of teaching will prevent her having time to discharge in person. Will you be this mistress? He put the question rather hurriedly he seemed half to expect an indignant or at least a disdainful rejection of the offer not knowing all my thoughts and feelings though guessing some he could not tell in what light the lot would appear to me. In truth it was humble—but then it was sheltered and I wanted a safe asylum it was plodding—but then compared with that of a governess in a rich house it was independent and the fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul like iron it was not ignoble—not unworthy—not mentally degrading I made my decision. I thank you for the proposal Mr Rivers and I accept it with all my heart. But you comprehend me? he said. It is a village school your scholars will be only poor girls—cottagers’ children—at the best farmers’ daughters. Knitting sewing reading writing ciphering will be all you will have to teach. What will you do with your accomplishments? What with the largest portion of your mind—sentiments—tastes? Save them till they are wanted. They will keep. You know what you undertake then? I do. He now smiled and not a bitter or a sad smile but one well pleased and deeply gratified. And when will you commence the exercise of your function? I will go to my house to-morrow and open the school if you like next week. Very well so be it. He rose and walked through the room. Standing still he again looked at me. He shook his head. What do you disapprove of Mr Rivers? I asked. You will not stay at Morton long no no! Why? What is your reason for saying so? I read it in your eye it is not of that description which promises the maintenance of an even tenor in life. I am not ambitious. He started at the word ambitious. He repeated No. What made you think of ambition? Who is ambitious? I know I am but how did you find it out? I was speaking of myself. Well if you are not ambitious you are— He paused. What? I was going to say impassioned but perhaps you would have misunderstood the word and been displeased. I mean that human affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you. I am sure you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude and to devote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly void of stimulus any more than I can be content he added with emphasis to live here buried in morass pent in with mountains—my nature that God gave me contravened my faculties heaven-bestowed paralysed—made useless. You hear now how I contradict myself. I who preached contentment with a humble lot and justified the vocation even of hewers of wood and drawers of water in God’s service—I His ordained minister almost rave in my restlessness. Well propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means. He left the room. In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than in the whole previous month yet still he puzzled me. Diana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day approached for leaving their brother and their home. They both tried to appear as usual but the sorrow they had to struggle against was one that could not be entirely conquered or concealed. Diana intimated that this would be a different parting from any they had ever yet known. It would probably as far as St. John was concerned be a parting for years it might be a parting for life. He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves she said natural affection and feelings more potent still. St. John looks quiet Jane but he hides a fever in his vitals. You would think him gentle yet in some things he is inexorable as death and the worst of it is my conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his severe decision certainly I cannot for a moment blame him for it. It is right noble Christian yet it breaks my heart! And the tears gushed to her fine eyes. Mary bent her head low over her work. We are now without father we shall soon be without home and brother she murmured. At that moment a little accident supervened which seemed decreed by fate purposely to prove the truth of the adage that misfortunes never come singly and to add to their distresses the vexing one of the slip between the cup and the lip. St. John passed the window reading a letter. He entered. Our uncle John is dead said he. Both the sisters seemed struck not shocked or appalled the tidings appeared in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting. Dead? repeated Diana. Yes. She riveted a searching gaze on her brother’s face. And what then? she demanded in a low voice. What then Die? he replied maintaining a marble immobility of feature. What then? Why—nothing. Read. He threw the letter into her lap. She glanced over it and handed it to Mary. Mary perused it in silence and returned it to her brother. All three looked at each other and all three smiled—a dreary pensive smile enough. Amen! We can yet live said Diana at last. At any rate it makes us no worse off than we were before remarked Mary. Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what might have been said Mr Rivers and contrasts it somewhat too vividly with what is. He folded the letter locked it in his desk and again went out. For some minutes no one spoke. Diana then turned to me. Jane you will wonder at us and our mysteries she said and think us hard-hearted beings not to be more moved at the death of so near a relation as an uncle but we have never seen him or known him. He was my mother’s brother. My father and he quarrelled long ago. It was by his advice that my father risked most of his property in the speculation that ruined him. Mutual recrimination passed between them they parted in anger and were never reconciled. My uncle engaged afterwards in more prosperous undertakings it appears he realised a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. He was never married and had no near kindred but ourselves and one other person not more closely related than we. My father always cherished the idea that he would atone for his error by leaving his possessions to us that letter informs us that he has bequeathed every penny to the other relation with the exception of thirty guineas to be divided between St. John Diana and Mary Rivers for the purchase of three mourning rings. He had a right of course to do as he pleased and yet a momentary damp is cast on the spirits by the receipt of such news. Mary and I would have esteemed ourselves rich with a thousand pounds each and to St. John such a sum would have been valuable for the good it would have enabled him to do. This explanation given the subject was dropped and no further reference made to it by either Mr Rivers or his sisters. The next day I left Marsh End for Morton. The day after Diana and Mary quitted it for distant B——. In a week Mr Rivers and Hannah repaired to the parsonage and so the old grange was abandoned. ', 'My home then when I at last find a home—is a cottage a little room with whitewashed walls and a sanded floor containing four painted chairs and a table a clock a cupboard with two or three plates and dishes and a set of tea-things in delf. Above a chamber of the same dimensions as the kitchen with a deal bedstead and chest of drawers small yet too large to be filled with my scanty wardrobe though the kindness of my gentle and generous friends has increased that by a modest stock of such things as are necessary. It is evening. I have dismissed with the fee of an orange the little orphan who serves me as a handmaid. I am sitting alone on the hearth. This morning the village school opened. I had twenty scholars. But three of the number can read none write or cipher. Several knit and a few sew a little. They speak with the broadest accent of the district. At present they and I have a difficulty in understanding each other’s language. Some of them are unmannered rough intractable as well as ignorant but others are docile have a wish to learn and evince a disposition that pleases me. I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy and that the germs of native excellence refinement intelligence kind feeling are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born. My duty will be to develop these germs surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office. Much enjoyment I do not expect in the life opening before me yet it will doubtless if I regulate my mind and exert my powers as I ought yield me enough to live on from day to day. Was I very gleeful settled content during the hours I passed in yonder bare humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon? Not to deceive myself I must reply—No I felt desolate to a degree. I felt—yes idiot that I am—I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance the poverty the coarseness of all I heard and saw round me. But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings I know them to be wrong—that is a great step gained I shall strive to overcome them. To-morrow I trust I shall get the better of them partially and in a few weeks perhaps they will be quite subdued. In a few months it is possible the happiness of seeing progress and a change for the better in my scholars may substitute gratification for disgust. Meantime let me ask myself one question—Which is better?—To have surrendered to temptation listened to passion made no painful effort—no struggle—but to have sunk down in the silken snare fallen asleep on the flowers covering it wakened in a southern clime amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa to have been now living in France Mr Rochester’s mistress delirious with his love half my time—for he would—oh yes he would have loved me well for a while. He did love me—no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty youth and grace—for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me—it is what no man besides will ever be.—But where am I wandering and what am I saying and above all feeling? Whether is it better I ask to be a slave in a fool’s paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss one hour—suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next—or to be a village-schoolmistress free and honest in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England? Yes I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law and scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God directed me to a correct choice I thank His providence for the guidance! Having brought my eventide musings to this point I rose went to my door and looked at the sunset of the harvest-day and at the quiet fields before my cottage which with the school was distant half a mile from the village. The birds were singing their last strains— The air was mild the dew was balm. While I looked I thought myself happy and was surprised to find myself ere long weeping—and why? For the doom which had reft me from adhesion to my master for him I was no more to see for the desperate grief and fatal fury—consequences of my departure—which might now perhaps be dragging him from the path of right too far to leave hope of ultimate restoration thither. At this thought I turned my face aside from the lovely sky of eve and lonely vale of Morton—I say lonely for in that bend of it visible to me there was no building apparent save the church and the parsonage half-hid in trees and quite at the extremity the roof of Vale Hall where the rich Mr Oliver and his daughter lived. I hid my eyes and leant my head against the stone frame of my door but soon a slight noise near the wicket which shut in my tiny garden from the meadow beyond it made me look up. A dog—old Carlo Mr Rivers’ pointer as I saw in a moment—was pushing the gate with his nose and St. John himself leant upon it with folded arms his brow knit his gaze grave almost to displeasure fixed on me. I asked him to come in. No I cannot stay I have only brought you a little parcel my sisters left for you. I think it contains a colour-box pencils and paper. I approached to take it a welcome gift it was. He examined my face I thought with austerity as I came near the traces of tears were doubtless very visible upon it. Have you found your first day’s work harder than you expected? he asked. Oh no! On the contrary I think in time I shall get on with my scholars very well. But perhaps your accommodations—your cottage—your furniture—have disappointed your expectations? They are in truth scanty enough but— I interrupted— My cottage is clean and weather-proof my furniture sufficient and commodious. All I see has made me thankful not despondent. I am not absolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the absence of a carpet a sofa and silver plate besides five weeks ago I had nothing—I was an outcast a beggar a vagrant now I have acquaintance a home a business. I wonder at the goodness of God the generosity of my friends the bounty of my lot. I do not repine. But you feel solitude an oppression? The little house there behind you is dark and empty. I have hardly had time yet to enjoy a sense of tranquillity much less to grow impatient under one of loneliness. Very well I hope you feel the content you express at any rate your good sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to the vacillating fears of Lot’s wife. What you had left before I saw you of course I do not know but I counsel you to resist firmly every temptation which would incline you to look back pursue your present career steadily for some months at least. It is what I mean to do I answered. St. John continued— It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature but that it may be done I know from experience. God has given us in a measure the power to make our own fate and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get—when our will strains after a path we may not follow—we need neither starve from inanition nor stand still in despair we have but to seek another nourishment for the mind as strong as the forbidden food it longed to taste—and perhaps purer and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us if rougher than it. A year ago I was myself intensely miserable because I thought I had made a mistake in entering the ministry its uniform duties wearied me to death. I burnt for the more active life of the world—for the more exciting toils of a literary career—for the destiny of an artist author orator anything rather than that of a priest yes the heart of a politician of a soldier of a votary of glory a lover of renown a luster after power beat under my curate’s surplice. I considered my life was so wretched it must be changed or I must die. After a season of darkness and struggling light broke and relief fell my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds—my powers heard a call from heaven to rise gather their full strength spread their wings and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me to bear which afar to deliver it well skill and strength courage and eloquence the best qualifications of soldier statesman and orator were all needed for these all centre in the good missionary. A missionary I resolved to be. From that moment my state of mind changed the fetters dissolved and dropped from every faculty leaving nothing of bondage but its galling soreness—which time only can heal. My father indeed imposed the determination but since his death I have not a legitimate obstacle to contend with some affairs settled a successor for Morton provided an entanglement or two of the feelings broken through or cut asunder—a last conflict with human weakness in which I know I shall overcome because I have vowed that I will overcome—and I leave Europe for the East. He said this in his peculiar subdued yet emphatic voice looking when he had ceased speaking not at me but at the setting sun at which I looked too. Both he and I had our backs towards the path leading up the field to the wicket. We had heard no step on that grass-grown track the water running in the vale was the one lulling sound of the hour and scene we might well then start when a gay voice sweet as a silver bell exclaimed— Good evening Mr Rivers. And good evening old Carlo. Your dog is quicker to recognise his friends than you are sir he pricked his ears and wagged his tail when I was at the bottom of the field and you have your back towards me now. It was true. Though Mr Rivers had started at the first of those musical accents as if a thunderbolt had split a cloud over his head he stood yet at the close of the sentence in the same attitude in which the speaker had surprised him—his arm resting on the gate his face directed towards the west. He turned at last with measured deliberation. A vision as it seemed to me had risen at his side. There appeared within three feet of him a form clad in pure white—a youthful graceful form full yet fine in contour and when after bending to caress Carlo it lifted up its head and threw back a long veil there bloomed under his glance a face of perfect beauty. Perfect beauty is a strong expression but I do not retrace or qualify it as sweet features as ever the temperate clime of Albion moulded as pure hues of rose and lily as ever her humid gales and vapoury skies generated and screened justified in this instance the term. No charm was wanting no defect was perceptible the young girl had regular and delicate lineaments eyes shaped and coloured as we see them in lovely pictures large and dark and full the long and shadowy eyelash which encircles a fine eye with so soft a fascination the pencilled brow which gives such clearness the white smooth forehead which adds such repose to the livelier beauties of tint and ray the cheek oval fresh and smooth the lips fresh too ruddy healthy sweetly formed the even and gleaming teeth without flaw the small dimpled chin the ornament of rich plenteous tresses—all advantages in short which combined realise the ideal of beauty were fully hers. I wondered as I looked at this fair creature I admired her with my whole heart. Nature had surely formed her in a partial mood and forgetting her usual stinted step-mother dole of gifts had endowed this her darling with a grand-dame’s bounty. What did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel? I naturally asked myself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her and as naturally I sought the answer to the inquiry in his countenance. He had already withdrawn his eye from the Peri and was looking at a humble tuft of daisies which grew by the wicket. A lovely evening but late for you to be out alone he said as he crushed the snowy heads of the closed flowers with his foot. Oh I only came home from S—— she mentioned the name of a large town some twenty miles distant this afternoon. Papa told me you had opened your school and that the new mistress was come and so I put on my bonnet after tea and ran up the valley to see her this is she? pointing to me. It is said St. John. Do you think you shall like Morton? she asked of me with a direct and naïve simplicity of tone and manner pleasing if child-like. I hope I shall. I have many inducements to do so. Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected? Quite. Do you like your house? Very much. Have I furnished it nicely? Very nicely indeed. And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood? You have indeed. She is teachable and handy. This then I thought is Miss Oliver the heiress favoured it seems in the gifts of fortune as well as in those of nature! What happy combination of the planets presided over her birth I wonder? I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes she added. It will be a change for me to visit you now and then and I like a change. Mr Rivers I have been so gay during my stay at S——. Last night or rather this morning I was dancing till two o’clock. The ——th regiment are stationed there since the riots and the officers are the most agreeable men in the world they put all our young knife-grinders and scissor merchants to shame. It seemed to me that Mr St. John’s under lip protruded and his upper lip curled a moment. His mouth certainly looked a good deal compressed and the lower part of his face unusually stern and square as the laughing girl gave him this information. He lifted his gaze too from the daisies and turned it on her. An unsmiling a searching a meaning gaze it was. She answered it with a second laugh and laughter well became her youth her roses her dimples her bright eyes. As he stood mute and grave she again fell to caressing Carlo. Poor Carlo loves me said she. He is not stern and distant to his friends and if he could speak he would not be silent. As she patted the dog’s head bending with native grace before his young and austere master I saw a glow rise to that master’s face. I saw his solemn eye melt with sudden fire and flicker with resistless emotion. Flushed and kindled thus he looked nearly as beautiful for a man as she for a woman. His chest heaved once as if his large heart weary of despotic constriction had expanded despite the will and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty. But he curbed it I think as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed. He responded neither by word nor movement to the gentle advances made him. Papa says you never come to see us now continued Miss Oliver looking up. You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall. He is alone this evening and not very well will you return with me and visit him? It is not a seasonable hour to intrude on Mr Oliver answered St. John. Not a seasonable hour! But I declare it is. It is just the hour when papa most wants company when the works are closed and he has no business to occupy him. Now Mr Rivers do come. Why are you so very shy and so very sombre? She filled up the hiatus his silence left by a reply of her own. I forgot! she exclaimed shaking her beautiful curled head as if shocked at herself. I am so giddy and thoughtless! Do excuse me. It had slipped my memory that you have good reasons to be indisposed for joining in my chatter. Diana and Mary have left you and Moor House is shut up and you are so lonely. I am sure I pity you. Do come and see papa. Not to-night Miss Rosamond not to-night. Mr St. John spoke almost like an automaton himself only knew the effort it cost him thus to refuse. Well if you are so obstinate I will leave you for I dare not stay any longer the dew begins to fall. Good evening! She held out her hand. He just touched it. Good evening! he repeated in a voice low and hollow as an echo. She turned but in a moment returned. Are you well? she asked. Well might she put the question his face was blanched as her gown. Quite well he enunciated and with a bow he left the gate. She went one way he another. She turned twice to gaze after him as she tripped fairy-like down the field he as he strode firmly across never turned at all. This spectacle of another’s suffering and sacrifice rapt my thoughts from exclusive meditation on my own. Diana Rivers had designated her brother inexorable as death. She had not exaggerated. ', 'I continued the labours of the village-school as actively and faithfully as I could. It was truly hard work at first. Some time elapsed before with all my efforts I could comprehend my scholars and their nature. Wholly untaught with faculties quite torpid they seemed to me hopelessly dull and at first sight all dull alike but I soon found I was mistaken. There was a difference amongst them as amongst the educated and when I got to know them and they me this difference rapidly developed itself. Their amazement at me my language my rules and ways once subsided I found some of these heavy-looking gaping rustics wake up into sharp-witted girls enough. Many showed themselves obliging and amiable too and I discovered amongst them not a few examples of natural politeness and innate self-respect as well as of excellent capacity that won both my goodwill and my admiration. These soon took a pleasure in doing their work well in keeping their persons neat in learning their tasks regularly in acquiring quiet and orderly manners. The rapidity of their progress in some instances was even surprising and an honest and happy pride I took in it besides I began personally to like some of the best girls and they liked me. I had amongst my scholars several farmers’ daughters young women grown almost. These could already read write and sew and to them I taught the elements of grammar geography history and the finer kinds of needlework. I found estimable characters amongst them—characters desirous of information and disposed for improvement—with whom I passed many a pleasant evening hour in their own homes. Their parents then the farmer and his wife loaded me with attentions. There was an enjoyment in accepting their simple kindness and in repaying it by a consideration—a scrupulous regard to their feelings—to which they were not perhaps at all times accustomed and which both charmed and benefited them because while it elevated them in their own eyes it made them emulous to merit the deferential treatment they received. I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went out I heard on all sides cordial salutations and was welcomed with friendly smiles. To live amidst general regard though it be but the regard of working people is like sitting in sunshine calm and sweet serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray. At this period of my life my heart far oftener swelled with thankfulness than sank with dejection and yet reader to tell you all in the midst of this calm this useful existence—after a day passed in honourable exertion amongst my scholars an evening spent in drawing or reading contentedly alone—I used to rush into strange dreams at night dreams many-coloured agitated full of the ideal the stirring the stormy—dreams where amidst unusual scenes charged with adventure with agitating risk and romantic chance I still again and again met Mr Rochester always at some exciting crisis and then the sense of being in his arms hearing his voice meeting his eye touching his hand and cheek loving him being loved by him—the hope of passing a lifetime at his side would be renewed with all its first force and fire. Then I awoke. Then I recalled where I was and how situated. Then I rose up on my curtainless bed trembling and quivering and then the still dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair and heard the burst of passion. By nine o’clock the next morning I was punctually opening the school tranquil settled prepared for the steady duties of the day. Rosamond Oliver kept her word in coming to visit me. Her call at the school was generally made in the course of her morning ride. She would canter up to the door on her pony followed by a mounted livery servant. Anything more exquisite than her appearance in her purple habit with her Amazon’s cap of black velvet placed gracefully above the long curls that kissed her cheek and floated to her shoulders can scarcely be imagined and it was thus she would enter the rustic building and glide through the dazzled ranks of the village children. She generally came at the hour when Mr Rivers was engaged in giving his daily catechising lesson. Keenly I fear did the eye of the visitress pierce the young pastor’s heart. A sort of instinct seemed to warn him of her entrance even when he did not see it and when he was looking quite away from the door if she appeared at it his cheek would glow and his marble-seeming features though they refused to relax changed indescribably and in their very quiescence became expressive of a repressed fervour stronger than working muscle or darting glance could indicate. Of course she knew her power indeed he did not because he could not conceal it from her. In spite of his Christian stoicism when she went up and addressed him and smiled gaily encouragingly even fondly in his face his hand would tremble and his eye burn. He seemed to say with his sad and resolute look if he did not say it with his lips I love you and I know you prefer me. It is not despair of success that keeps me dumb. If I offered my heart I believe you would accept it. But that heart is already laid on a sacred altar the fire is arranged round it. It will soon be no more than a sacrifice consumed. And then she would pout like a disappointed child a pensive cloud would soften her radiant vivacity she would withdraw her hand hastily from his and turn in transient petulance from his aspect at once so heroic and so martyr-like. St. John no doubt would have given the world to follow recall retain her when she thus left him but he would not give one chance of heaven nor relinquish for the elysium of her love one hope of the true eternal Paradise. Besides he could not bind all that he had in his nature—the rover the aspirant the poet the priest—in the limits of a single passion. He could not—he would not—renounce his wild field of mission warfare for the parlours and the peace of Vale Hall. I learnt so much from himself in an inroad I once despite his reserve had the daring to make on his confidence. Miss Oliver already honoured me with frequent visits to my cottage. I had learnt her whole character which was without mystery or disguise she was coquettish but not heartless exacting but not worthlessly selfish. She had been indulged from her birth but was not absolutely spoilt. She was hasty but good-humoured vain she could not help it when every glance in the glass showed her such a flush of loveliness but not affected liberal-handed innocent of the pride of wealth ingenuous sufficiently intelligent gay lively and unthinking she was very charming in short even to a cool observer of her own sex like me but she was not profoundly interesting or thoroughly impressive. A very different sort of mind was hers from that for instance of the sisters of St. John. Still I liked her almost as I liked my pupil Adèle except that for a child whom we have watched over and taught a closer affection is engendered than we can give an equally attractive adult acquaintance. She had taken an amiable caprice to me. She said I was like Mr Rivers only certainly she allowed not one-tenth so handsome though I was a nice neat little soul enough but he was an angel. I was however good clever composed and firm like him. I was a lusus naturæ she affirmed as a village schoolmistress she was sure my previous history if known would make a delightful romance. One evening while with her usual child-like activity and thoughtless yet not offensive inquisitiveness she was rummaging the cupboard and the table-drawer of my little kitchen she discovered first two French books a volume of Schiller a German grammar and dictionary and then my drawing-materials and some sketches including a pencil-head of a pretty little cherub-like girl one of my scholars and sundry views from nature taken in the Vale of Morton and on the surrounding moors. She was first transfixed with surprise and then electrified with delight. Had I done these pictures? Did I know French and German? What a love—what a miracle I was! I drew better than her master in the first school in S——. Would I sketch a portrait of her to show to papa? With pleasure I replied and I felt a thrill of artist-delight at the idea of copying from so perfect and radiant a model. She had then on a dark-blue silk dress her arms and her neck were bare her only ornament was her chestnut tresses which waved over her shoulders with all the wild grace of natural curls. I took a sheet of fine card-board and drew a careful outline. I promised myself the pleasure of colouring it and as it was getting late then I told her she must come and sit another day. She made such a report of me to her father that Mr Oliver himself accompanied her next evening—a tall massive-featured middle-aged and grey-headed man at whose side his lovely daughter looked like a bright flower near a hoary turret. He appeared a taciturn and perhaps a proud personage but he was very kind to me. The sketch of Rosamond’s portrait pleased him highly he said I must make a finished picture of it. He insisted too on my coming the next day to spend the evening at Vale Hall. I went. I found it a large handsome residence showing abundant evidences of wealth in the proprietor. Rosamond was full of glee and pleasure all the time I stayed. Her father was affable and when he entered into conversation with me after tea he expressed in strong terms his approbation of what I had done in Morton school and said he only feared from what he saw and heard I was too good for the place and would soon quit it for one more suitable. Indeed cried Rosamond she is clever enough to be a governess in a high family papa. I thought I would far rather be where I am than in any high family in the land. Mr Oliver spoke of Mr Rivers—of the Rivers family—with great respect. He said it was a very old name in that neighbourhood that the ancestors of the house were wealthy that all Morton had once belonged to them that even now he considered the representative of that house might if he liked make an alliance with the best. He accounted it a pity that so fine and talented a young man should have formed the design of going out as a missionary it was quite throwing a valuable life away. It appeared then that her father would throw no obstacle in the way of Rosamond’s union with St. John. Mr Oliver evidently regarded the young clergyman’s good birth old name and sacred profession as sufficient compensation for the want of fortune. It was the 5th of November and a holiday. My little servant after helping me to clean my house was gone well satisfied with the fee of a penny for her aid. All about me was spotless and bright—scoured floor polished grate and well-rubbed chairs. I had also made myself neat and had now the afternoon before me to spend as I would. The translation of a few pages of German occupied an hour then I got my palette and pencils and fell to the more soothing because easier occupation of completing Rosamond Oliver’s miniature. The head was finished already there was but the background to tint and the drapery to shade off a touch of carmine too to add to the ripe lips—a soft curl here and there to the tresses—a deeper tinge to the shadow of the lash under the azured eyelid. I was absorbed in the execution of these nice details when after one rapid tap my door unclosed admitting St. John Rivers. I am come to see how you are spending your holiday he said. Not I hope in thought? No that is well while you draw you will not feel lonely. You see I mistrust you still though you have borne up wonderfully so far. I have brought you a book for evening solace and he laid on the table a new publication—a poem one of those genuine productions so often vouchsafed to the fortunate public of those days—the golden age of modern literature. Alas! the readers of our era are less favoured. But courage! I will not pause either to accuse or repine. I know poetry is not dead nor genius lost nor has Mammon gained power over either to bind or slay they will both assert their existence their presence their liberty and strength again one day. Powerful angels safe in heaven! they smile when sordid souls triumph and feeble ones weep over their destruction. Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity no do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No they not only live but reign and redeem and without their divine influence spread everywhere you would be in hell—the hell of your own meanness. While I was eagerly glancing at the bright pages of Marmion for Marmion it was St. John stooped to examine my drawing. His tall figure sprang erect again with a start he said nothing. I looked up at him he shunned my eye. I knew his thoughts well and could read his heart plainly at the moment I felt calmer and cooler than he I had then temporarily the advantage of him and I conceived an inclination to do him some good if I could. With all his firmness and self-control thought I he tasks himself too far locks every feeling and pang within—expresses confesses imparts nothing. I am sure it would benefit him to talk a little about this sweet Rosamond whom he thinks he ought not to marry I will make him talk. I said first Take a chair Mr Rivers. But he answered as he always did that he could not stay. Very well I responded mentally stand if you like but you shall not go just yet I am determined solitude is at least as bad for you as it is for me. I’ll try if I cannot discover the secret spring of your confidence and find an aperture in that marble breast through which I can shed one drop of the balm of sympathy. Is this portrait like? I asked bluntly. Like! Like whom? I did not observe it closely. You did Mr Rivers. He almost started at my sudden and strange abruptness he looked at me astonished. Oh that is nothing yet I muttered within. I don’t mean to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part I’m prepared to go to considerable lengths. I continued You observed it closely and distinctly but I have no objection to your looking at it again and I rose and placed it in his hand. A well-executed picture he said very soft clear colouring very graceful and correct drawing. Yes yes I know all that. But what of the resemblance? Who is it like? Mastering some hesitation he answered Miss Oliver I presume. Of course. And now sir to reward you for the accurate guess I will promise to paint you a careful and faithful duplicate of this very picture provided you admit that the gift would be acceptable to you. I don’t wish to throw away my time and trouble on an offering you would deem worthless. He continued to gaze at the picture the longer he looked the firmer he held it the more he seemed to covet it. It is like! he murmured the eye is well managed the colour light expression are perfect. It smiles! Would it comfort or would it wound you to have a similar painting? Tell me that. When you are at Madagascar or at the Cape or in India would it be a consolation to have that memento in your possession? or would the sight of it bring recollections calculated to enervate and distress? He now furtively raised his eyes he glanced at me irresolute disturbed he again surveyed the picture. That I should like to have it is certain whether it would be judicious or wise is another question. Since I had ascertained that Rosamond really preferred him and that her father was not likely to oppose the match I—less exalted in my views than St. John—had been strongly disposed in my own heart to advocate their union. It seemed to me that should he become the possessor of Mr Oliver’s large fortune he might do as much good with it as if he went and laid his genius out to wither and his strength to waste under a tropical sun. With this persuasion I now answered— As far as I can see it would be wiser and more judicious if you were to take to yourself the original at once. By this time he had sat down he had laid the picture on the table before him and with his brow supported on both hands hung fondly over it. I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity. I saw even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he had deemed unapproachable—to hear it thus freely handled—was beginning to be felt by him as a new pleasure—an unhoped-for relief. Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all and to burst with boldness and good-will into the silent sea of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations. She likes you I am sure said I as I stood behind his chair and her father respects you. Moreover she is a sweet girl—rather thoughtless but you would have sufficient thought for both yourself and her. You ought to marry her. Does she like me? he asked. Certainly better than she likes any one else. She talks of you continually there is no subject she enjoys so much or touches upon so often. It is very pleasant to hear this he said—very go on for another quarter of an hour. And he actually took out his watch and laid it upon the table to measure the time. But where is the use of going on I asked when you are probably preparing some iron blow of contradiction or forging a fresh chain to fetter your heart? Don’t imagine such hard things. Fancy me yielding and melting as I am doing human love rising like a freshly opened fountain in my mind and overflowing with sweet inundation all the field I have so carefully and with such labour prepared—so assiduously sown with the seeds of good intentions of self-denying plans. And now it is deluged with a nectarous flood—the young germs swamped—delicious poison cankering them now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in the drawing-room at Vale Hall at my bride Rosamond Oliver’s feet she is talking to me with her sweet voice—gazing down on me with those eyes your skilful hand has copied so well—smiling at me with these coral lips. She is mine—I am hers—this present life and passing world suffice to me. Hush! say nothing—my heart is full of delight—my senses are entranced—let the time I marked pass in peace. I humoured him the watch ticked on he breathed fast and low I stood silent. Amidst this hush the quartet sped he replaced the watch laid the picture down rose and stood on the hearth. Now said he that little space was given to delirium and delusion. I rested my temples on the breast of temptation and put my neck voluntarily under her yoke of flowers I tasted her cup. The pillow was burning there is an asp in the garland the wine has a bitter taste her promises are hollow—her offers false I see and know all this. I gazed at him in wonder. It is strange pursued he that while I love Rosamond Oliver so wildly—with all the intensity indeed of a first passion the object of which is exquisitely beautiful graceful fascinating—I experience at the same time a calm unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a good wife that she is not the partner suited to me that I should discover this within a year after marriage and that to twelve months’ rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know. Strange indeed! I could not help ejaculating. While something in me he went on is acutely sensible to her charms something else is as deeply impressed with her defects they are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to—co-operate in nothing I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer a labourer a female apostle? Rosamond a missionary’s wife? No! But you need not be a missionary. You might relinquish that scheme. Relinquish! What! my vocation? My great work? My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their race—of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance—of substituting peace for war—freedom for bondage—religion for superstition—the hope of heaven for the fear of hell? Must I relinquish that? It is dearer than the blood in my veins. It is what I have to look forward to and to live for. After a considerable pause I said—And Miss Oliver? Are her disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you? Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers in less than a month my image will be effaced from her heart. She will forget me and will marry probably some one who will make her far happier than I should do. You speak coolly enough but you suffer in the conflict. You are wasting away. No. If I get a little thin it is with anxiety about my prospects yet unsettled—my departure continually procrastinated. Only this morning I received intelligence that the successor whose arrival I have been so long expecting cannot be ready to replace me for three months to come yet and perhaps the three months may extend to six. You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the schoolroom. Again the surprised expression crossed his face. He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me I felt at home in this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with strong discreet and refined minds whether male or female till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve and crossed the threshold of confidence and won a place by their heart’s very hearthstone. You are original said he and not timid. There is something brave in your spirit as well as penetrating in your eye but allow me to assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions. You think them more profound and potent than they are. You give me a larger allowance of sympathy than I have a just claim to. When I colour and when I shake before Miss Oliver I do not pity myself. I scorn the weakness. I know it is ignoble a mere fever of the flesh not I declare the convulsion of the soul. That is just as fixed as a rock firm set in the depths of a restless sea. Know me to be what I am—a cold hard man. I smiled incredulously. You have taken my confidence by storm he continued and now it is much at your service. I am simply in my original state—stripped of that blood-bleached robe with which Christianity covers human deformity—a cold hard ambitious man. Natural affection only of all the sentiments has permanent power over me. Reason and not feeling is my guide my ambition is unlimited my desire to rise higher to do more than others insatiable. I honour endurance perseverance industry talent because these are the means by which men achieve great ends and mount to lofty eminence. I watch your career with interest because I consider you a specimen of a diligent orderly energetic woman not because I deeply compassionate what you have gone through or what you still suffer. You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher I said. No. There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers I believe and I believe the Gospel. You missed your epithet. I am not a pagan but a Christian philosopher—a follower of the sect of Jesus. As His disciple I adopt His pure His merciful His benignant doctrines. I advocate them I am sworn to spread them. Won in youth to religion she has cultivated my original qualities thus—From the minute germ natural affection she has developed the overshadowing tree philanthropy. From the wild stringy root of human uprightness she has reared a due sense of the Divine justice. Of the ambition to win power and renown for my wretched self she has formed the ambition to spread my Master’s kingdom to achieve victories for the standard of the cross. So much has religion done for me turning the original materials to the best account pruning and training nature. But she could not eradicate nature nor will it be eradicated ‘till this mortal shall put on immortality.’ Having said this he took his hat which lay on the table beside my palette. Once more he looked at the portrait. She is lovely he murmured. She is well named the Rose of the World indeed! And may I not paint one like it for you? Cui bono? No. He drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was accustomed to rest my hand in painting to prevent the cardboard from being sullied. What he suddenly saw on this blank paper it was impossible for me to tell but something had caught his eye. He took it up with a snatch he looked at the edge then shot a glance at me inexpressibly peculiar and quite incomprehensible a glance that seemed to take and make note of every point in my shape face and dress for it traversed all quick keen as lightning. His lips parted as if to speak but he checked the coming sentence whatever it was. What is the matter? I asked. Nothing in the world was the reply and replacing the paper I saw him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin. It disappeared in his glove and with one hasty nod and good-afternoon he vanished. Well! I exclaimed using an expression of the district that caps the globe however! I in my turn scrutinised the paper but saw nothing on it save a few dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil. I pondered the mystery a minute or two but finding it insolvable and being certain it could not be of much moment I dismissed and soon forgot it. ', 'When Mr St. John went it was beginning to snow the whirling storm continued all night. The next day a keen wind brought fresh and blinding falls by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost impassable. I had closed my shutter laid a mat to the door to prevent the snow from blowing in under it trimmed my fire and after sitting nearly an hour on the hearth listening to the muffled fury of the tempest I lit a candle took down Marmion and beginning— Day set on Norham’s castled steep And Tweed’s fair river broad and deep     And Cheviot’s mountains lone The massive towers the donjon keep The flanking walls that round them sweep     In yellow lustre shone— I soon forgot storm in music. I heard a noise the wind I thought shook the door. No it was St. John Rivers who lifting the latch came in out of the frozen hurricane—the howling darkness—and stood before me the cloak that covered his tall figure all white as a glacier. I was almost in consternation so little had I expected any guest from the blocked-up vale that night. Any ill news? I demanded. Has anything happened? No. How very easily alarmed you are! he answered removing his cloak and hanging it up against the door towards which he again coolly pushed the mat which his entrance had deranged. He stamped the snow from his boots. I shall sully the purity of your floor said he but you must excuse me for once. Then he approached the fire. I have had hard work to get here I assure you he observed as he warmed his hands over the flame. One drift took me up to the waist happily the snow is quite soft yet. But why are you come? I could not forbear saying. Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor but since you ask it I answer simply to have a little talk with you I got tired of my mute books and empty rooms. Besides since yesterday I have experienced the excitement of a person to whom a tale has been half-told and who is impatient to hear the sequel. He sat down. I recalled his singular conduct of yesterday and really I began to fear his wits were touched. If he were insane however his was a very cool and collected insanity I had never seen that handsome-featured face of his look more like chiselled marble than it did just now as he put aside his snow-wet hair from his forehead and let the firelight shine free on his pale brow and cheek as pale where it grieved me to discover the hollow trace of care or sorrow now so plainly graved. I waited expecting he would say something I could at least comprehend but his hand was now at his chin his finger on his lip he was thinking. It struck me that his hand looked wasted like his face. A perhaps uncalled-for gush of pity came over my heart I was moved to say— I wish Diana or Mary would come and live with you it is too bad that you should be quite alone and you are recklessly rash about your own health. Not at all said he I care for myself when necessary. I am well now. What do you see amiss in me? This was said with a careless abstracted indifference which showed that my solicitude was at least in his opinion wholly superfluous. I was silenced. He still slowly moved his finger over his upper lip and still his eye dwelt dreamily on the glowing grate thinking it urgent to say something I asked him presently if he felt any cold draught from the door which was behind him. No no! he responded shortly and somewhat testily. Well I reflected if you won’t talk you may be still I’ll let you alone now and return to my book. So I snuffed the candle and resumed the perusal of Marmion. He soon stirred my eye was instantly drawn to his movements he only took out a morocco pocket-book thence produced a letter which he read in silence folded it put it back relapsed into meditation. It was vain to try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before me nor could I in impatience consent to be dumb he might rebuff me if he liked but talk I would. Have you heard from Diana and Mary lately? Not since the letter I showed you a week ago. There has not been any change made about your own arrangements? You will not be summoned to leave England sooner than you expected? I fear not indeed such chance is too good to befall me. Baffled so far I changed my ground. I bethought myself to talk about the school and my scholars. Mary Garrett’s mother is better and Mary came back to the school this morning and I shall have four new girls next week from the Foundry Close—they would have come to-day but for the snow. Indeed! Mr Oliver pays for two. Does he? He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas. I know. Was it your suggestion? No. Whose then? His daughter’s I think. It is like her she is so good-natured. Yes. Again came the blank of a pause the clock struck eight strokes. It aroused him he uncrossed his legs sat erect turned to me. Leave your book a moment and come a little nearer the fire he said. Wondering and of my wonder finding no end I complied. Half-an-hour ago he pursued I spoke of my impatience to hear the sequel of a tale on reflection I find the matter will be better managed by my assuming the narrator’s part and converting you into a listener. Before commencing it is but fair to warn you that the story will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears but stale details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass through new lips. For the rest whether trite or novel it is short. Twenty years ago a poor curate—never mind his name at this moment—fell in love with a rich man’s daughter she fell in love with him and married him against the advice of all her friends who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two years passed the rash pair were both dead and laid quietly side by side under one slab. I have seen their grave it formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in ——shire. They left a daughter which at its very birth Charity received in her lap—cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night. Charity carried the friendless thing to the house of its rich maternal relations it was reared by an aunt-in-law called I come to names now Mrs Reed of Gateshead. You start—did you hear a noise? I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the rafters of the adjoining schoolroom it was a barn before I had it repaired and altered and barns are generally haunted by rats.—To proceed. Mrs Reed kept the orphan ten years whether it was happy or not with her I cannot say never having been told but at the end of that time she transferred it to a place you know—being no other than Lowood School where you so long resided yourself. It seems her career there was very honourable from a pupil she became a teacher like yourself—really it strikes me there are parallel points in her history and yours—she left it to be a governess there again your fates were analogous she undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr Rochester. Mr Rivers! I interrupted. I can guess your feelings he said but restrain them for a while I have nearly finished hear me to the end. Of Mr Rochester’s character I know nothing but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable marriage to this young girl and that at the very altar she discovered he had a wife yet alive though a lunatic. What his subsequent conduct and proposals were is a matter of pure conjecture but when an event transpired which rendered inquiry after the governess necessary it was discovered she was gone—no one could tell when where or how. She had left Thornfield Hall in the night every research after her course had been vain the country had been scoured far and wide no vestige of information could be gathered respecting her. Yet that she should be found is become a matter of serious urgency advertisements have been put in all the papers I myself have received a letter from one Mr Briggs a solicitor communicating the details I have just imparted. Is it not an odd tale? Just tell me this said I and since you know so much you surely can tell it me—what of Mr Rochester? How and where is he? What is he doing? Is he well? I am ignorant of all concerning Mr Rochester the letter never mentions him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I have adverted to. You should rather ask the name of the governess—the nature of the event which requires her appearance. Did no one go to Thornfield Hall then? Did no one see Mr Rochester? I suppose not. But they wrote to him? Of course. And what did he say? Who has his letters? Mr Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not from Mr Rochester but from a lady it is signed ‘Alice Fairfax.’ I felt cold and dismayed my worst fears then were probably true he had in all probability left England and rushed in reckless desperation to some former haunt on the Continent. And what opiate for his severe sufferings—what object for his strong passions—had he sought there? I dared not answer the question. Oh my poor master—once almost my husband—whom I had often called my dear Edward! He must have been a bad man observed Mr Rivers. You don’t know him—don’t pronounce an opinion upon him I said with warmth. Very well he answered quietly and indeed my head is otherwise occupied than with him I have my tale to finish. Since you won’t ask the governess’s name I must tell it of my own accord. Stay! I have it here—it is always more satisfactory to see important points written down fairly committed to black and white. And the pocket-book was again deliberately produced opened sought through from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip of paper hastily torn off I recognised in its texture and its stains of ultra-marine and lake and vermillion the ravished margin of the portrait-cover. He got up held it close to my eyes and I read traced in Indian ink in my own handwriting the words JANE EYRE—the work doubtless of some moment of abstraction. Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre he said the advertisements demanded a Jane Eyre I knew a Jane Elliott.—I confess I had my suspicions but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once resolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the alias? Yes—yes but where is Mr Briggs? He perhaps knows more of Mr Rochester than you do. Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all about Mr Rochester it is not in Mr Rochester he is interested. Meantime you forget essential points in pursuing trifles you do not inquire why Mr Briggs sought after you—what he wanted with you. Well what did he want? Merely to tell you that your uncle Mr Eyre of Madeira is dead that he has left you all his property and that you are now rich—merely that—nothing more. I!—rich? Yes you rich—quite an heiress. Silence succeeded. You must prove your identity of course resumed St. John presently a step which will offer no difficulties you can then enter on immediate possession. Your fortune is vested in the English funds Briggs has the will and the necessary documents. Here was a new card turned up! It is a fine thing reader to be lifted in a moment from indigence to wealth—a very fine thing but not a matter one can comprehend or consequently enjoy all at once. And then there are other chances in life far more thrilling and rapture-giving this is solid an affair of the actual world nothing ideal about it all its associations are solid and sober and its manifestations are the same. One does not jump and spring and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune one begins to consider responsibilities and to ponder business on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares and we contain ourselves and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow. Besides the words Legacy Bequest go side by side with the words Death Funeral. My uncle I had heard was dead—my only relative ever since being made aware of his existence I had cherished the hope of one day seeing him now I never should. And then this money came only to me not to me and a rejoicing family but to my isolated self. It was a grand boon doubtless and independence would be glorious—yes I felt that—that thought swelled my heart. You unbend your forehead at last said Mr Rivers. I thought Medusa had looked at you and that you were turning to stone. Perhaps now you will ask how much you are worth? How much am I worth? Oh a trifle! Nothing of course to speak of—twenty thousand pounds I think they say—but what is that? Twenty thousand pounds? Here was a new stunner—I had been calculating on four or five thousand. This news actually took my breath for a moment Mr St. John whom I had never heard laugh before laughed now. Well said he if you had committed a murder and I had told you your crime was discovered you could scarcely look more aghast. It is a large sum—don’t you think there is a mistake? No mistake at all. Perhaps you have read the figures wrong—it may be two thousand! It is written in letters not figures—twenty thousand. I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for a hundred. Mr Rivers rose now and put his cloak on. If it were not such a very wild night he said I would send Hannah down to keep you company you look too desperately miserable to be left alone. But Hannah poor woman! could not stride the drifts so well as I her legs are not quite so long so I must e’en leave you to your sorrows. Good-night. He was lifting the latch a sudden thought occurred to me. Stop one minute! I cried. Well? It puzzles me to know why Mr Briggs wrote to you about me or how he knew you or could fancy that you living in such an out-of-the-way place had the power to aid in my discovery. Oh! I am a clergyman he said and the clergy are often appealed to about odd matters. Again the latch rattled. No that does not satisfy me! I exclaimed and indeed there was something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which instead of allaying piqued my curiosity more than ever. It is a very strange piece of business I added I must know more about it. Another time. No to-night!—to-night! and as he turned from the door I placed myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed. You certainly shall not go till you have told me all I said. I would rather not just now. You shall!—you must! I would rather Diana or Mary informed you. Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax gratified it must be and that without delay and I told him so. But I apprised you that I was a hard man said he difficult to persuade. And I am a hard woman—impossible to put off. And I am a hard woman—impossible to put off And then he pursued I am cold no fervour infects me. Whereas I am hot and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has thawed all the snow from your cloak by the same token it has streamed on to my floor and made it like a trampled street. As you hope ever to be forgiven Mr Rivers the high crime and misdemeanour of spoiling a sanded kitchen tell me what I wish to know. Well then he said I yield if not to your earnestness to your perseverance as stone is worn by continual dropping. Besides you must know some day—as well now as later. Your name is Jane Eyre? Of course that was all settled before. You are not perhaps aware that I am your namesake?—that I was christened St. John Eyre Rivers? No indeed! I remember now seeing the letter E. comprised in your initials written in books you have at different times lent me but I never asked for what name it stood. But what then? Surely— I stopped I could not trust myself to entertain much less to express the thought that rushed upon me—that embodied itself—that in a second stood out a strong solid probability. Circumstances knit themselves fitted themselves shot into order the chain that had been lying hitherto a formless lump of links was drawn out straight—every ring was perfect the connection complete. I knew by instinct how the matter stood before St. John had said another word but I cannot expect the reader to have the same intuitive perception so I must repeat his explanation. My mother’s name was Eyre she had two brothers one a clergyman who married Miss Jane Reed of Gateshead the other John Eyre Esq. merchant late of Funchal Madeira. Mr Briggs being Mr Eyre’s solicitor wrote to us last August to inform us of our uncle’s death and to say that he had left his property to his brother the clergyman’s orphan daughter overlooking us in consequence of a quarrel never forgiven between him and my father. He wrote again a few weeks since to intimate that the heiress was lost and asking if we knew anything of her. A name casually written on a slip of paper has enabled me to find her out. You know the rest. Again he was going but I set my back against the door. Do let me speak I said let me have one moment to draw breath and reflect. I paused—he stood before me hat in hand looking composed enough. I resumed— Your mother was my father’s sister? Yes. My aunt consequently? He bowed. My uncle John was your uncle John? You Diana and Mary are his sister’s children as I am his brother’s child? Undeniably. You three then are my cousins half our blood on each side flows from the same source? We are cousins yes. I surveyed him. It seemed I had found a brother one I could be proud of—one I could love and two sisters whose qualities were such that when I knew them but as mere strangers they had inspired me with genuine affection and admiration. The two girls on whom kneeling down on the wet ground and looking through the low latticed window of Moor House kitchen I had gazed with so bitter a mixture of interest and despair were my near kinswomen and the young and stately gentleman who had found me almost dying at his threshold was my blood relation. Glorious discovery to a lonely wretch! This was wealth indeed!—wealth to the heart!—a mine of pure genial affections. This was a blessing bright vivid and exhilarating—not like the ponderous gift of gold rich and welcome enough in its way but sobering from its weight. I now clapped my hands in sudden joy—my pulse bounded my veins thrilled. Oh I am glad!—I am glad! I exclaimed. St. John smiled. Did I not say you neglected essential points to pursue trifles? he asked. You were serious when I told you you had got a fortune and now for a matter of no moment you are excited. What can you mean? It may be of no moment to you you have sisters and don’t care for a cousin but I had nobody and now three relations—or two if you don’t choose to be counted—are born into my world full-grown. I say again I am glad! I walked fast through the room I stopped half suffocated with the thoughts that rose faster than I could receive comprehend settle them—thoughts of what might could would and should be and that ere long. I looked at the blank wall it seemed a sky thick with ascending stars—every one lit me to a purpose or delight. Those who had saved my life whom till this hour I had loved barrenly I could now benefit. They were under a yoke—I could free them they were scattered—I could reunite them the independence the affluence which was mine might be theirs too. Were we not four? Twenty thousand pounds shared equally would be five thousand each justice—enough and to spare justice would be done—mutual happiness secured. Now the wealth did not weigh on me now it was not a mere bequest of coin—it was a legacy of life hope enjoyment. How I looked while these ideas were taking my spirit by storm I cannot tell but I perceived soon that Mr Rivers had placed a chair behind me and was gently attempting to make me sit down on it. He also advised me to be composed I scorned the insinuation of helplessness and distraction shook off his hand and began to walk about again. Write to Diana and Mary to-morrow I said and tell them to come home directly. Diana said they would both consider themselves rich with a thousand pounds so with five thousand they will do very well. Tell me where I can get you a glass of water said St. John you must really make an effort to tranquillise your feelings. Nonsense! and what sort of an effect will the bequest have on you? Will it keep you in England induce you to marry Miss Oliver and settle down like an ordinary mortal? You wander your head becomes confused. I have been too abrupt in communicating the news it has excited you beyond your strength. Mr Rivers! you quite put me out of patience I am rational enough it is you who misunderstand or rather who affect to misunderstand. Perhaps if you explained yourself a little more fully I should comprehend better. Explain! What is there to explain? You cannot fail to see that twenty thousand pounds the sum in question divided equally between the nephew and three nieces of our uncle will give five thousand to each? What I want is that you should write to your sisters and tell them of the fortune that has accrued to them. To you you mean. I have intimated my view of the case I am incapable of taking any other. I am not brutally selfish blindly unjust or fiendishly ungrateful. Besides I am resolved I will have a home and connections. I like Moor House and I will live at Moor House I like Diana and Mary and I will attach myself for life to Diana and Mary. It would please and benefit me to have five thousand pounds it would torment and oppress me to have twenty thousand which moreover could never be mine in justice though it might in law. I abandon to you then what is absolutely superfluous to me. Let there be no opposition and no discussion about it let us agree amongst each other and decide the point at once. This is acting on first impulses you must take days to consider such a matter ere your word can be regarded as valid. Oh! if all you doubt is my sincerity I am easy you see the justice of the case? I do see a certain justice but it is contrary to all custom. Besides the entire fortune is your right my uncle gained it by his own efforts he was free to leave it to whom he would he left it to you. After all justice permits you to keep it you may with a clear conscience consider it absolutely your own. With me said I it is fully as much a matter of feeling as of conscience I must indulge my feelings I so seldom have had an opportunity of doing so. Were you to argue object and annoy me for a year I could not forego the delicious pleasure of which I have caught a glimpse—that of repaying in part a mighty obligation and winning to myself lifelong friends. You think so now rejoined St. John because you do not know what it is to possess nor consequently to enjoy wealth you cannot form a notion of the importance twenty thousand pounds would give you of the place it would enable you to take in society of the prospects it would open to you you cannot— And you I interrupted cannot at all imagine the craving I have for fraternal and sisterly love. I never had a home I never had brothers or sisters I must and will have them now you are not reluctant to admit me and own me are you? Jane I will be your brother—my sisters will be your sisters—without stipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights. Brother? Yes at the distance of a thousand leagues! Sisters? Yes slaving amongst strangers! I wealthy—gorged with gold I never earned and do not merit! You penniless! Famous equality and fraternisation! Close union! Intimate attachment! But Jane your aspirations after family ties and domestic happiness may be realised otherwise than by the means you contemplate you may marry. Nonsense again! Marry! I don’t want to marry and never shall marry. That is saying too much such hazardous affirmations are a proof of the excitement under which you labour. It is not saying too much I know what I feel and how averse are my inclinations to the bare thought of marriage. No one would take me for love and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere money speculation. And I do not want a stranger—unsympathising alien different from me I want my kindred those with whom I have full fellow-feeling. Say again you will be my brother when you uttered the words I was satisfied happy repeat them if you can repeat them sincerely. I think I can. I know I have always loved my own sisters and I know on what my affection for them is grounded—respect for their worth and admiration of their talents. You too have principle and mind your tastes and habits resemble Diana’s and Mary’s your presence is always agreeable to me in your conversation I have already for some time found a salutary solace. I feel I can easily and naturally make room in my heart for you as my third and youngest sister. Thank you that contents me for to-night. Now you had better go for if you stay longer you will perhaps irritate me afresh by some mistrustful scruple. And the school Miss Eyre? It must now be shut up I suppose? No. I will retain my post of mistress till you get a substitute. He smiled approbation we shook hands and he took leave. I need not narrate in detail the further struggles I had and arguments I used to get matters regarding the legacy settled as I wished. My task was a very hard one but as I was absolutely resolved—as my cousins saw at length that my mind was really and immutably fixed on making a just division of the property—as they must in their own hearts have felt the equity of the intention and must besides have been innately conscious that in my place they would have done precisely what I wished to do—they yielded at length so far as to consent to put the affair to arbitration. The judges chosen were Mr Oliver and an able lawyer both coincided in my opinion I carried my point. The instruments of transfer were drawn out St. John Diana Mary and I each became possessed of a competency. ', 'It was near Christmas by the time all was settled the season of general holiday approached. I now closed Morton school taking care that the parting should not be barren on my side. Good fortune opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully and to give somewhat when we have largely received is but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the sensations. I had long felt with pleasure that many of my rustic scholars liked me and when we parted that consciousness was confirmed they manifested their affection plainly and strongly. Deep was my gratification to find I had really a place in their unsophisticated hearts I promised them that never a week should pass in future that I did not visit them and give them an hour’s teaching in their school. Mr Rivers came up as having seen the classes now numbering sixty girls file out before me and locked the door I stood with the key in my hand exchanging a few words of special farewell with some half-dozen of my best scholars as decent respectable modest and well-informed young women as could be found in the ranks of the British peasantry. And that is saying a great deal for after all the British peasantry are the best taught best mannered most self-respecting of any in Europe since those days I have seen paysannes and Bäuerinnen and the best of them seemed to me ignorant coarse and besotted compared with my Morton girls. Do you consider you have got your reward for a season of exertion? asked Mr Rivers when they were gone. Does not the consciousness of having done some real good in your day and generation give pleasure? Doubtless. And you have only toiled a few months! Would not a life devoted to the task of regenerating your race be well spent? Yes I said but I could not go on for ever so I want to enjoy my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. I must enjoy them now don’t recall either my mind or body to the school I am out of it and disposed for full holiday. He looked grave. What now? What sudden eagerness is this you evince? What are you going to do? To be active as active as I can. And first I must beg you to set Hannah at liberty and get somebody else to wait on you. Do you want her? Yes to go with me to Moor House. Diana and Mary will be at home in a week and I want to have everything in order against their arrival. I understand. I thought you were for flying off on some excursion. It is better so Hannah shall go with you. Tell her to be ready by to-morrow then and here is the schoolroom key I will give you the key of my cottage in the morning. He took it. You give it up very gleefully said he I don’t quite understand your light-heartedness because I cannot tell what employment you propose to yourself as a substitute for the one you are relinquishing. What aim what purpose what ambition in life have you now? My first aim will be to clean down do you comprehend the full force of the expression?—to clean down Moor House from chamber to cellar my next to rub it up with bees-wax oil and an indefinite number of cloths till it glitters again my third to arrange every chair table bed carpet with mathematical precision afterwards I shall go near to ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in every room and lastly the two days preceding that on which your sisters are expected will be devoted by Hannah and me to such a beating of eggs sorting of currants grating of spices compounding of Christmas cakes chopping up of materials for mince-pies and solemnising of other culinary rites as words can convey but an inadequate notion of to the uninitiated like you. My purpose in short is to have all things in an absolutely perfect state of readiness for Diana and Mary before next Thursday and my ambition is to give them a beau-ideal of a welcome when they come. St. John smiled slightly still he was dissatisfied. It is all very well for the present said he but seriously I trust that when the first flush of vivacity is over you will look a little higher than domestic endearments and household joys. The best things the world has! I interrupted. No Jane no this world is not the scene of fruition do not attempt to make it so nor of rest do not turn slothful. I mean on the contrary to be busy. Jane I excuse you for the present two months’ grace I allow you for the full enjoyment of your new position and for pleasing yourself with this late-found charm of relationship but then I hope you will begin to look beyond Moor House and Morton and sisterly society and the selfish calm and sensual comfort of civilised affluence. I hope your energies will then once more trouble you with their strength. I looked at him with surprise. St. John I said I think you are almost wicked to talk so. I am disposed to be as content as a queen and you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end? To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed to your keeping and of which He will surely one day demand a strict account. Jane I shall watch you closely and anxiously—I warn you of that. And try to restrain the disproportionate fervour with which you throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures. Don’t cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause forbear to waste them on trite transient objects. Do you hear Jane? Yes just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate cause to be happy and I will be happy. Goodbye! Happy at Moor House I was and hard I worked and so did Hannah she was charmed to see how jovial I could be amidst the bustle of a house turned topsy-turvy—how I could brush and dust and clean and cook. And really after a day or two of confusion worse confounded it was delightful by degrees to invoke order from the chaos ourselves had made. I had previously taken a journey to S—— to purchase some new furniture my cousins having given me carte blanche to effect what alterations I pleased and a sum having been set aside for that purpose. The ordinary sitting-room and bedrooms I left much as they were for I knew Diana and Mary would derive more pleasure from seeing again the old homely tables and chairs and beds than from the spectacle of the smartest innovations. Still some novelty was necessary to give to their return the piquancy with which I wished it to be invested. Dark handsome new carpets and curtains an arrangement of some carefully selected antique ornaments in porcelain and bronze new coverings and mirrors and dressing-cases for the toilet tables answered the end they looked fresh without being glaring. A spare parlour and bedroom I refurnished entirely with old mahogany and crimson upholstery I laid canvas on the passage and carpets on the stairs. When all was finished I thought Moor House as complete a model of bright modest snugness within as it was at this season a specimen of wintry waste and desert dreariness without. The eventful Thursday at length came. They were expected about dark and ere dusk fires were lit upstairs and below the kitchen was in perfect trim Hannah and I were dressed and all was in readiness. St. John arrived first. I had entreated him to keep quite clear of the house till everything was arranged and indeed the bare idea of the commotion at once sordid and trivial going on within its walls sufficed to scare him to estrangement. He found me in the kitchen watching the progress of certain cakes for tea then baking. Approaching the hearth he asked If I was at last satisfied with housemaid’s work? I answered by inviting him to accompany me on a general inspection of the result of my labours. With some difficulty I got him to make the tour of the house. He just looked in at the doors I opened and when he had wandered upstairs and downstairs he said I must have gone through a great deal of fatigue and trouble to have effected such considerable changes in so short a time but not a syllable did he utter indicating pleasure in the improved aspect of his abode. This silence damped me. I thought perhaps the alterations had disturbed some old associations he valued. I inquired whether this was the case no doubt in a somewhat crest-fallen tone. Not at all he had on the contrary remarked that I had scrupulously respected every association he feared indeed I must have bestowed more thought on the matter than it was worth. How many minutes for instance had I devoted to studying the arrangement of this very room?—By-the-bye could I tell him where such a book was? I showed him the volume on the shelf he took it down and withdrawing to his accustomed window recess he began to read it. Now I did not like this reader. St. John was a good man but I began to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard and cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for him—its peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally he lived only to aspire—after what was good and great certainly but still he would never rest nor approve of others resting round him. As I looked at his lofty forehead still and pale as a white stone—at his fine lineaments fixed in study—I comprehended all at once that he would hardly make a good husband that it would be a trying thing to be his wife. I understood as by inspiration the nature of his love for Miss Oliver I agreed with him that it was but a love of the senses. I comprehended how he should despise himself for the feverish influence it exercised over him how he should wish to stifle and destroy it how he should mistrust its ever conducting permanently to his happiness or hers. I saw he was of the material from which nature hews her heroes—Christian and Pagan—her lawgivers her statesmen her conquerors a steadfast bulwark for great interests to rest upon but at the fireside too often a cold cumbrous column gloomy and out of place. This parlour is not his sphere I reflected the Himalayan ridge or Caffre bush even the plague-cursed Guinea Coast swamp would suit him better. Well may he eschew the calm of domestic life it is not his element there his faculties stagnate—they cannot develop or appear to advantage. It is in scenes of strife and danger—where courage is proved and energy exercised and fortitude tasked—that he will speak and move the leader and superior. A merry child would have the advantage of him on this hearth. He is right to choose a missionary’s career—I see it now. They are coming! they are coming! cried Hannah throwing open the parlour door. At the same moment old Carlo barked joyfully. Out I ran. It was now dark but a rumbling of wheels was audible. Hannah soon had a lantern lit. The vehicle had stopped at the wicket the driver opened the door first one well-known form then another stepped out. In a minute I had my face under their bonnets in contact first with Mary’s soft cheek then with Diana’s flowing curls. They laughed—kissed me—then Hannah patted Carlo who was half wild with delight asked eagerly if all was well and being assured in the affirmative hastened into the house. They were stiff with their long and jolting drive from Whitcross and chilled with the frosty night air but their pleasant countenances expanded to the cheerful firelight. While the driver and Hannah brought in the boxes they demanded St. John. At this moment he advanced from the parlour. They both threw their arms round his neck at once. He gave each one quiet kiss said in a low tone a few words of welcome stood a while to be talked to and then intimating that he supposed they would soon rejoin him in the parlour withdrew there as to a place of refuge. I had lit their candles to go upstairs but Diana had first to give hospitable orders respecting the driver this done both followed me. They were delighted with the renovation and decorations of their rooms with the new drapery and fresh carpets and rich tinted china vases they expressed their gratification ungrudgingly. I had the pleasure of feeling that my arrangements met their wishes exactly and that what I had done added a vivid charm to their joyous return home. Sweet was that evening. My cousins full of exhilaration were so eloquent in narrative and comment that their fluency covered St. John’s taciturnity he was sincerely glad to see his sisters but in their glow of fervour and flow of joy he could not sympathise. The event of the day—that is the return of Diana and Mary—pleased him but the accompaniments of that event the glad tumult the garrulous glee of reception irked him I saw he wished the calmer morrow was come. In the very meridian of the night’s enjoyment about an hour after tea a rap was heard at the door. Hannah entered with the intimation that a poor lad was come at that unlikely time to fetch Mr Rivers to see his mother who was drawing away. Where does she live Hannah? Clear up at Whitcross Brow almost four miles off and moor and moss all the way. Tell him I will go. I’m sure sir you had better not. It’s the worst road to travel after dark that can be there’s no track at all over the bog. And then it is such a bitter night—the keenest wind you ever felt. You had better send word sir that you will be there in the morning. But he was already in the passage putting on his cloak and without one objection one murmur he departed. It was then nine o’clock he did not return till midnight. Starved and tired enough he was but he looked happier than when he set out. He had performed an act of duty made an exertion felt his own strength to do and deny and was on better terms with himself. I am afraid the whole of the ensuing week tried his patience. It was Christmas week we took to no settled employment but spent it in a sort of merry domestic dissipation. The air of the moors the freedom of home the dawn of prosperity acted on Diana and Mary’s spirits like some life-giving elixir they were gay from morning till noon and from noon till night. They could always talk and their discourse witty pithy original had such charms for me that I preferred listening to and sharing in it to doing anything else. St. John did not rebuke our vivacity but he escaped from it he was seldom in the house his parish was large the population scattered and he found daily business in visiting the sick and poor in its different districts. One morning at breakfast Diana after looking a little pensive for some minutes asked him If his plans were yet unchanged. Unchanged and unchangeable was the reply. And he proceeded to inform us that his departure from England was now definitively fixed for the ensuing year. And Rosamond Oliver? suggested Mary the words seeming to escape her lips involuntarily for no sooner had she uttered them than she made a gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a book in his hand—it was his unsocial custom to read at meals—he closed it and looked up. Rosamond Oliver said he is about to be married to Mr Granby one of the best connected and most estimable residents in S—— grandson and heir to Sir Frederic Granby I had the intelligence from her father yesterday. His sisters looked at each other and at me we all three looked at him he was serene as glass. The match must have been got up hastily said Diana they cannot have known each other long. But two months they met in October at the county ball at S——. But where there are no obstacles to a union as in the present case where the connection is in every point desirable delays are unnecessary they will be married as soon as S—— Place which Sir Frederic gives up to them can be refitted for their reception. The first time I found St. John alone after this communication I felt tempted to inquire if the event distressed him but he seemed so little to need sympathy that so far from venturing to offer him more I experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had already hazarded. Besides I was out of practice in talking to him his reserve was again frozen over and my frankness was congealed beneath it. He had not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters he continually made little chilling differences between us which did not at all tend to the development of cordiality in short now that I was acknowledged his kinswoman and lived under the same roof with him I felt the distance between us to be far greater than when he had known me only as the village schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had once been admitted to his confidence I could hardly comprehend his present frigidity. Such being the case I felt not a little surprised when he raised his head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping and said— You see Jane the battle is fought and the victory won. Startled at being thus addressed I did not immediately reply after a moment’s hesitation I answered— But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors whose triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin you? I think not and if I were it does not much signify I shall never be called upon to contend for such another. The event of the conflict is decisive my way is now clear I thank God for it! So saying he returned to his papers and his silence. As our mutual happiness i.e. Diana’s Mary’s and mine settled into a quieter character and we resumed our usual habits and regular studies St. John stayed more at home he sat with us in the same room sometimes for hours together. While Mary drew Diana pursued a course of encyclopædic reading she had to my awe and amazement undertaken and I fagged away at German he pondered a mystic lore of his own that of some Eastern tongue the acquisition of which he thought necessary to his plans. Thus engaged he appeared sitting in his own recess quiet and absorbed enough but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the outlandish-looking grammar and wandering over and sometimes fixing upon us his fellow-students with a curious intensity of observation if caught it would be instantly withdrawn yet ever and anon it returned searchingly to our table. I wondered what it meant I wondered too at the punctual satisfaction he never failed to exhibit on an occasion that seemed to me of small moment namely my weekly visit to Morton school and still more was I puzzled when if the day was unfavourable if there was snow or rain or high wind and his sisters urged me not to go he would invariably make light of their solicitude and encourage me to accomplish the task without regard to the elements. Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her he would say she can bear a mountain blast or a shower or a few flakes of snow as well as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and elastic—better calculated to endure variations of climate than many more robust. And when I returned sometimes a good deal tired and not a little weather-beaten I never dared complain because I saw that to murmur would be to vex him on all occasions fortitude pleased him the reverse was a special annoyance. One afternoon however I got leave to stay at home because I really had a cold. His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead I sat reading Schiller he deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls. As I exchanged a translation for an exercise I happened to look his way there I found myself under the influence of the ever-watchful blue eye. How long it had been searching me through and through and over and over I cannot tell so keen was it and yet so cold I felt for the moment superstitious—as if I were sitting in the room with something uncanny. Jane what are you doing? Learning German. I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee. You are not in earnest? In such earnest that I must have it so and I will tell you why. He then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he was himself at present studying that as he advanced he was apt to forget the commencement that it would assist him greatly to have a pupil with whom he might again and again go over the elements and so fix them thoroughly in his mind that his choice had hovered for some time between me and his sisters but that he had fixed on me because he saw I could sit at a task the longest of the three. Would I do him this favour? I should not perhaps have to make the sacrifice long as it wanted now barely three months to his departure. St. John was not a man to be lightly refused you felt that every impression made on him either for pain or pleasure was deep-graved and permanent. I consented. When Diana and Mary returned the former found her scholar transferred from her to her brother she laughed and both she and Mary agreed that St. John should never have persuaded them to such a step. He answered quietly— I know it. I found him a very patient very forbearing and yet an exacting master he expected me to do a great deal and when I fulfilled his expectations he in his own way fully testified his approbation. By degrees he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind his praise and notice were more restraining than his indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity at least in me was distasteful to him. I was so fully aware that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable that in his presence every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain I fell under a freezing spell. When he said go I went come I came do this I did it. But I did not love my servitude I wished many a time he had continued to neglect me. One evening when at bedtime his sisters and I stood round him bidding him good-night he kissed each of them as was his custom and as was equally his custom he gave me his hand. Diana who chanced to be in a frolicsome humour she was not painfully controlled by his will for hers in another way was as strong exclaimed— St. John! you used to call Jane your third sister but you don’t treat her as such you should kiss her too. She pushed me towards him. I thought Diana very provoking and felt uncomfortably confused and while I was thus thinking and feeling St. John bent his head his Greek face was brought to a level with mine his eyes questioned my eyes piercingly—he kissed me. There are no such things as marble kisses or ice kisses or I should say my ecclesiastical cousin’s salute belonged to one of these classes but there may be experiment kisses and his was an experiment kiss. When given he viewed me to learn the result it was not striking I am sure I did not blush perhaps I might have turned a little pale for I felt as if this kiss were a seal affixed to my fetters. He never omitted the ceremony afterwards and the gravity and quiescence with which I underwent it seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm. As for me I daily wished more to please him but to do so I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature stifle half my faculties wrest my tastes from their original bent force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation. He wanted to train me to an elevation I could never reach it racked me hourly to aspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing was as impossible as to mould my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern to give to my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint and solemn lustre of his own. Not his ascendancy alone however held me in thrall at present. Of late it had been easy enough for me to look sad a cankering evil sat at my heart and drained my happiness at its source—the evil of suspense. Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr Rochester reader amidst these changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment. His idea was still with me because it was not a vapour sunshine could disperse nor a sand-traced effigy storms could wash away it was a name graven on a tablet fated to last as long as the marble it inscribed. The craving to know what had become of him followed me everywhere when I was at Morton I re-entered my cottage every evening to think of that and now at Moor House I sought my bedroom each night to brood over it. In the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr Briggs about the will I had inquired if he knew anything of Mr Rochester’s present residence and state of health but as St. John had conjectured he was quite ignorant of all concerning him. I then wrote to Mrs Fairfax entreating information on the subject. I had calculated with certainty on this step answering my end I felt sure it would elicit an early answer. I was astonished when a fortnight passed without reply but when two months wore away and day after day the post arrived and brought nothing for me I fell a prey to the keenest anxiety. I wrote again there was a chance of my first letter having missed. Renewed hope followed renewed effort it shone like the former for some weeks then like it it faded flickered not a line not a word reached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy my hope died out and then I felt dark indeed. A fine spring shone round me which I could not enjoy. Summer approached Diana tried to cheer me she said I looked ill and wished to accompany me to the sea-side. This St. John opposed he said I did not want dissipation I wanted employment my present life was too purposeless I required an aim and I suppose by way of supplying deficiencies he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindostanee and grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment and I like a fool never thought of resisting him—I could not resist him. One day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual the ebb was occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment. Hannah had told me in the morning there was a letter for me and when I went down to take it almost certain that the long-looked for tidings were vouchsafed me at last I found only an unimportant note from Mr Briggs on business. The bitter check had wrung from me some tears and now as I sat poring over the crabbed characters and flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe my eyes filled again. St. John called me to his side to read in attempting to do this my voice failed me words were lost in sobs. He and I were the only occupants of the parlour Diana was practising her music in the drawing-room Mary was gardening—it was a very fine May day clear sunny and breezy. My companion expressed no surprise at this emotion nor did he question me as to its cause he only said— We will wait a few minutes Jane till you are more composed. And while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste he sat calm and patient leaning on his desk and looking like a physician watching with the eye of science an expected and fully understood crisis in a patient’s malady. Having stifled my sobs wiped my eyes and muttered something about not being very well that morning I resumed my task and succeeded in completing it. St. John put away my books and his locked his desk and said— Now Jane you shall take a walk and with me. I will call Diana and Mary. No I want only one companion this morning and that must be you. Put on your things go out by the kitchen-door take the road towards the head of Marsh Glen I will join you in a moment. I know no medium I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings with positive hard characters antagonistic to my own between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always faithfully observed the one up to the very moment of bursting sometimes with volcanic vehemence into the other and as neither present circumstances warranted nor my present mood inclined me to mutiny I observed careful obedience to St. John’s directions and in ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen side by side with him. The breeze was from the west it came over the hills sweet with scents of heath and rush the sky was of stainless blue the stream descending the ravine swelled with past spring rains poured along plentiful and clear catching golden gleams from the sun and sapphire tints from the firmament. As we advanced and left the track we trod a soft turf mossy fine and emerald green minutely enamelled with a tiny white flower and spangled with a star-like yellow blossom the hills meantime shut us quite in for the glen towards its head wound to their very core. Let us rest here said St. John as we reached the first stragglers of a battalion of rocks guarding a sort of pass beyond which the beck rushed down a waterfall and where still a little farther the mountain shook off turf and flower had only heath for raiment and crag for gem—where it exaggerated the wild to the savage and exchanged the fresh for the frowning—where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude and a last refuge for silence. I took a seat St. John stood near me. He looked up the pass and down the hollow his glance wandered away with the stream and returned to traverse the unclouded heaven which coloured it he removed his hat let the breeze stir his hair and kiss his brow. He seemed in communion with the genius of the haunt with his eye he bade farewell to something. And I shall see it again he said aloud in dreams when I sleep by the Ganges and again in a more remote hour—when another slumber overcomes me—on the shore of a darker stream! Strange words of a strange love! An austere patriot’s passion for his fatherland! He sat down for half-an-hour we never spoke neither he to me nor I to him that interval past he recommenced— Jane I go in six weeks I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman which sails on the 20th of June. God will protect you for you have undertaken His work I answered. Yes said he there is my glory and joy. I am the servant of an infallible Master. I am not going out under human guidance subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms my king my lawgiver my captain is the All-perfect. It seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner—to join in the same enterprise. All have not your powers and it would be folly for the feeble to wish to march with the strong. I do not speak to the feeble or think of them I address only such as are worthy of the work and competent to accomplish it. Those are few in number and difficult to discover. You say truly but when found it is right to stir them up—to urge and exhort them to the effort—to show them what their gifts are and why they were given—to speak Heaven’s message in their ear—to offer them direct from God a place in the ranks of His chosen. If they are really qualified for the task will not their own hearts be the first to inform them of it? I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me I trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once declare and rivet the spell. And what does your heart say? demanded St. John. My heart is mute—my heart is mute I answered struck and thrilled. Then I must speak for it continued the deep relentless voice. Jane come with me to India come as my helpmeet and fellow-labourer. The glen and sky spun round the hills heaved! It was as if I had heard a summons from Heaven—as if a visionary messenger like him of Macedonia had enounced Come over and help us! But I was no apostle—I could not behold the herald—I could not receive his call. Oh St. John! I cried have some mercy! I appealed to one who in the discharge of what he believed his duty knew neither mercy nor remorse. He continued— God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife. It is not personal but mental endowments they have given you you are formed for labour not for love. A missionary’s wife you must—shall be. You shall be mine I claim you—not for my pleasure but for my Sovereign’s service. I am not fit for it I have no vocation I said. He had calculated on these first objections he was not irritated by them. Indeed as he leaned back against the crag behind him folded his arms on his chest and fixed his countenance I saw he was prepared for a long and trying opposition and had taken in a stock of patience to last him to its close—resolved however that that close should be conquest for him. Humility Jane said he is the groundwork of Christian virtues you say right that you are not fit for the work. Who is fit for it? Or who that ever was truly called believed himself worthy of the summons? I for instance am but dust and ashes. With St. Paul I acknowledge myself the chiefest of sinners but I do not suffer this sense of my personal vileness to daunt me. I know my Leader that He is just as well as mighty and while He has chosen a feeble instrument to perform a great task He will from the boundless stores of His providence supply the inadequacy of the means to the end. Think like me Jane—trust like me. It is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean on do not doubt but it will bear the weight of your human weakness. I do not understand a missionary life I have never studied missionary labours. There I humble as I am can give you the aid you want I can set you your task from hour to hour stand by you always help you from moment to moment. This I could do in the beginning soon for I know your powers you would be as strong and apt as myself and would not require my help. But my powers—where are they for this undertaking? I do not feel them. Nothing speaks or stirs in me while you talk. I am sensible of no light kindling—no life quickening—no voice counselling or cheering. Oh I wish I could make you see how much my mind is at this moment like a rayless dungeon with one shrinking fear fettered in its depths—the fear of being persuaded by you to attempt what I cannot accomplish! I have an answer for you—hear it. I have watched you ever since we first met I have made you my study for ten months. I have proved you in that time by sundry tests and what have I seen and elicited? In the village school I found you could perform well punctually uprightly labour uncongenial to your habits and inclinations I saw you could perform it with capacity and tact you could win while you controlled. In the calm with which you learnt you had become suddenly rich I read a mind clear of the vice of Demas—lucre had no undue power over you. In the resolute readiness with which you cut your wealth into four shares keeping but one to yourself and relinquishing the three others to the claim of abstract justice I recognised a soul that revelled in the flame and excitement of sacrifice. In the tractability with which at my wish you forsook a study in which you were interested and adopted another because it interested me in the untiring assiduity with which you have since persevered in it—in the unflagging energy and unshaken temper with which you have met its difficulties—I acknowledge the complement of the qualities I seek. Jane you are docile diligent disinterested faithful constant and courageous very gentle and very heroic cease to mistrust yourself—I can trust you unreservedly. As a conductress of Indian schools and a helper amongst Indian women your assistance will be to me invaluable. My iron shroud contracted round me persuasion advanced with slow sure step. Shut my eyes as I would these last words of his succeeded in making the way which had seemed blocked up comparatively clear. My work which had appeared so vague so hopelessly diffuse condensed itself as he proceeded and assumed a definite form under his shaping hand. He waited for an answer. I demanded a quarter of an hour to think before I again hazarded a reply. Very willingly he rejoined and rising he strode a little distance up the pass threw himself down on a swell of heath and there lay still. He threw himself down on a swell of heath and there lay still I can do what he wants me to do I am forced to see and acknowledge that I meditated—that is if life be spared me. But I feel mine is not the existence to be long protracted under an Indian sun. What then? He does not care for that when my time came to die he would resign me in all serenity and sanctity to the God who gave me. The case is very plain before me. In leaving England I should leave a loved but empty land—Mr Rochester is not there and if he were what is what can that ever be to me? My business is to live without him now nothing so absurd so weak as to drag on from day to day as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances which might reunite me to him. Of course as St. John once said I must seek another interest in life to replace the one lost is not the occupation he now offers me truly the most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not by its noble cares and sublime results the one best calculated to fill the void left by uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say Yes—and yet I shudder. Alas! If I join St. John I abandon half myself if I go to India I go to premature death. And how will the interval between leaving England for India and India for the grave be filled? Oh I know well! That too is very clear to my vision. By straining to satisfy St. John till my sinews ache I shall satisfy him—to the finest central point and farthest outward circle of his expectations. If I do go with him—if I do make the sacrifice he urges I will make it absolutely I will throw all on the altar—heart vitals the entire victim. He will never love me but he shall approve me I will show him energies he has not yet seen resources he has never suspected. Yes I can work as hard as he can and with as little grudging. Consent then to his demand is possible but for one item—one dreadful item. It is—that he asks me to be his wife and has no more of a husband’s heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge. He prizes me as a soldier would a good weapon and that is all. Unmarried to him this would never grieve me but can I let him complete his calculations—coolly put into practice his plans—go through the wedding ceremony? Can I receive from him the bridal ring endure all the forms of love which I doubt not he would scrupulously observe and know that the spirit was quite absent? Can I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a sacrifice made on principle? No such a martyrdom would be monstrous. I will never undergo it. As his sister I might accompany him—not as his wife I will tell him so. I looked towards the knoll there he lay still as a prostrate column his face turned to me his eye beaming watchful and keen. He started to his feet and approached me. I am ready to go to India if I may go free. Your answer requires a commentary he said it is not clear. You have hitherto been my adopted brother—I your adopted sister let us continue as such you and I had better not marry. He shook his head. Adopted fraternity will not do in this case. If you were my real sister it would be different I should take you and seek no wife. But as it is either our union must be consecrated and sealed by marriage or it cannot exist practical obstacles oppose themselves to any other plan. Do you not see it Jane? Consider a moment—your strong sense will guide you. I did consider and still my sense such as it was directed me only to the fact that we did not love each other as man and wife should and therefore it inferred we ought not to marry. I said so. St. John I returned I regard you as a brother—you me as a sister so let us continue. We cannot—we cannot he answered with short sharp determination it would not do. You have said you will go with me to India remember—you have said that. Conditionally. Well—well. To the main point—the departure with me from England the co-operation with me in my future labours—you do not object. You have already as good as put your hand to the plough you are too consistent to withdraw it. You have but one end to keep in view—how the work you have undertaken can best be done. Simplify your complicated interests feelings thoughts wishes aims merge all considerations in one purpose that of fulfilling with effect—with power—the mission of your great Master. To do so you must have a coadjutor not a brother—that is a loose tie—but a husband. I too do not want a sister a sister might any day be taken from me. I want a wife the sole helpmeet I can influence efficiently in life and retain absolutely till death. I shuddered as he spoke I felt his influence in my marrow—his hold on my limbs. Seek one elsewhere than in me St. John seek one fitted to you. One fitted to my purpose you mean—fitted to my vocation. Again I tell you it is not the insignificant private individual—the mere man with the man’s selfish senses—I wish to mate it is the missionary. And I will give the missionary my energies—it is all he wants—but not myself that would be only adding the husk and shell to the kernel. For them he has no use I retain them. You cannot—you ought not. Do you think God will be satisfied with half an oblation? Will He accept a mutilated sacrifice? It is the cause of God I advocate it is under His standard I enlist you. I cannot accept on His behalf a divided allegiance it must be entire. Oh! I will give my heart to God I said. You do not want it. I will not swear reader that there was not something of repressed sarcasm both in the tone in which I uttered this sentence and in the feeling that accompanied it. I had silently feared St. John till now because I had not understood him. He had held me in awe because he had held me in doubt. How much of him was saint how much mortal I could not heretofore tell but revelations were being made in this conference the analysis of his nature was proceeding before my eyes. I saw his fallibilities I comprehended them. I understood that sitting there where I did on the bank of heath and with that handsome form before me I sat at the feet of a man erring as I. The veil fell from his hardness and despotism. Having felt in him the presence of these qualities I felt his imperfection and took courage. I was with an equal—one with whom I might argue—one whom if I saw good I might resist. He was silent after I had uttered the last sentence and I presently risked an upward glance at his countenance. His eye bent on me expressed at once stern surprise and keen inquiry. Is she sarcastic and sarcastic to me! it seemed to say. What does this signify? Do not let us forget that this is a solemn matter he said ere long one of which we may neither think nor talk lightly without sin. I trust Jane you are in earnest when you say you will serve your heart to God it is all I want. Once wrench your heart from man and fix it on your Maker the advancement of that Maker’s spiritual kingdom on earth will be your chief delight and endeavour you will be ready to do at once whatever furthers that end. You will see what impetus would be given to your efforts and mine by our physical and mental union in marriage the only union that gives a character of permanent conformity to the destinies and designs of human beings and passing over all minor caprices—all trivial difficulties and delicacies of feeling—all scruple about the degree kind strength or tenderness of mere personal inclination—you will hasten to enter into that union at once. Shall I? I said briefly and I looked at his features beautiful in their harmony but strangely formidable in their still severity at his brow commanding but not open at his eyes bright and deep and searching but never soft at his tall imposing figure and fancied myself in idea his wife. Oh! it would never do! As his curate his comrade all would be right I would cross oceans with him in that capacity toil under Eastern suns in Asian deserts with him in that office admire and emulate his courage and devotion and vigour accommodate quietly to his masterhood smile undisturbed at his ineradicable ambition discriminate the Christian from the man profoundly esteem the one and freely forgive the other. I should suffer often no doubt attached to him only in this capacity my body would be under rather a stringent yoke but my heart and mind would be free. I should still have my unblighted self to turn to my natural unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of loneliness. There would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine to which he never came and sentiments growing there fresh and sheltered which his austerity could never blight nor his measured warrior-march trample down but as his wife—at his side always and always restrained and always checked—forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital—this would be unendurable. St. John! I exclaimed when I had got so far in my meditation. Well? he answered icily. I repeat I freely consent to go with you as your fellow-missionary but not as your wife I cannot marry you and become part of you. A part of me you must become he answered steadily otherwise the whole bargain is void. How can I a man not yet thirty take out with me to India a girl of nineteen unless she be married to me? How can we be for ever together—sometimes in solitudes sometimes amidst savage tribes—and unwed? Very well I said shortly under the circumstances quite as well as if I were either your real sister or a man and a clergyman like yourself. It is known that you are not my sister I cannot introduce you as such to attempt it would be to fasten injurious suspicions on us both. And for the rest though you have a man’s vigorous brain you have a woman’s heart and—it would not do. It would do I affirmed with some disdain perfectly well. I have a woman’s heart but not where you are concerned for you I have only a comrade’s constancy a fellow-soldier’s frankness fidelity fraternity if you like a neophyte’s respect and submission to his hierophant nothing more—don’t fear. It is what I want he said speaking to himself it is just what I want. And there are obstacles in the way they must be hewn down. Jane you would not repent marrying me—be certain of that we must be married. I repeat it there is no other way and undoubtedly enough of love would follow upon marriage to render the union right even in your eyes. I scorn your idea of love I could not help saying as I rose up and stood before him leaning my back against the rock. I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer yes St. John and I scorn you when you offer it. He looked at me fixedly compressing his well-cut lips while he did so. Whether he was incensed or surprised or what it was not easy to tell he could command his countenance thoroughly. I scarcely expected to hear that expression from you he said I think I have done and uttered nothing to deserve scorn. I was touched by his gentle tone and overawed by his high calm mien. Forgive me the words St. John but it is your own fault that I have been roused to speak so unguardedly. You have introduced a topic on which our natures are at variance—a topic we should never discuss the very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality were required what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin abandon your scheme of marriage—forget it. No said he it is a long-cherished scheme and the only one which can secure my great end but I shall urge you no further at present. To-morrow I leave home for Cambridge I have many friends there to whom I should wish to say farewell. I shall be absent a fortnight—take that space of time to consider my offer and do not forget that if you reject it it is not me you deny but God. Through my means He opens to you a noble career as my wife only can you enter upon it. Refuse to be my wife and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case you should be numbered with those who have denied the faith and are worse than infidels! He had done. Turning from me he once more Looked to river looked to hill. But this time his feelings were all pent in his heart I was not worthy to hear them uttered. As I walked by his side homeward I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature which has met resistance where it expected submission—the disapprobation of a cool inflexible judgment which has detected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to sympathise in short as a man he would have wished to coerce me into obedience it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with my perversity and allowed so long a space for reflection and repentance. That night after he had kissed his sisters he thought proper to forget even to shake hands with me but left the room in silence. I—who though I had no love had much friendship for him—was hurt by the marked omission so much hurt that tears started to my eyes. I see you and St. John have been quarrelling Jane said Diana during your walk on the moor. But go after him he is now lingering in the passage expecting you—he will make it up. I have not much pride under such circumstances I would always rather be happy than dignified and I ran after him—he stood at the foot of the stairs. Good-night St. John said I. Good-night Jane he replied calmly. Then shake hands I added. What a cold loose touch he impressed on my fingers! He was deeply displeased by what had occurred that day cordiality would not warm nor tears move him. No happy reconciliation was to be had with him—no cheering smile or generous word but still the Christian was patient and placid and when I asked him if he forgave me he answered that he was not in the habit of cherishing the remembrance of vexation that he had nothing to forgive not having been offended. And with that answer he left me. I would much rather he had knocked me down. ', 'He did not leave for Cambridge the next day as he had said he would. He deferred his departure a whole week and during that time he made me feel what severe punishment a good yet stern a conscientious yet implacable man can inflict on one who has offended him. Without one overt act of hostility one upbraiding word he contrived to impress me momently with the conviction that I was put beyond the pale of his favour. Not that St. John harboured a spirit of unchristian vindictiveness—not that he would have injured a hair of my head if it had been fully in his power to do so. Both by nature and principle he was superior to the mean gratification of vengeance he had forgiven me for saying I scorned him and his love but he had not forgotten the words and as long as he and I lived he never would forget them. I saw by his look when he turned to me that they were always written on the air between me and him whenever I spoke they sounded in my voice to his ear and their echo toned every answer he gave me. He did not abstain from conversing with me he even called me as usual each morning to join him at his desk and I fear the corrupt man within him had a pleasure unimparted to and unshared by the pure Christian in evincing with what skill he could while acting and speaking apparently just as usual extract from every deed and every phrase the spirit of interest and approval which had formerly communicated a certain austere charm to his language and manner. To me he was in reality become no longer flesh but marble his eye was a cold bright blue gem his tongue a speaking instrument—nothing more. All this was torture to me—refined lingering torture. It kept up a slow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief which harassed and crushed me altogether. I felt how—if I were his wife this good man pure as the deep sunless source could soon kill me without drawing from my veins a single drop of blood or receiving on his own crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime. Especially I felt this when I made any attempt to propitiate him. No ruth met my ruth. He experienced no suffering from estrangement—no yearning after reconciliation and though more than once my fast falling tears blistered the page over which we both bent they produced no more effect on him than if his heart had been really a matter of stone or metal. To his sisters meantime he was somewhat kinder than usual as if afraid that mere coldness would not sufficiently convince me how completely I was banished and banned he added the force of contrast and this I am sure he did not by malice but on principle. The night before he left home happening to see him walking in the garden about sunset and remembering as I looked at him that this man alienated as he now was had once saved my life and that we were near relations I was moved to make a last attempt to regain his friendship. I went out and approached him as he stood leaning over the little gate I spoke to the point at once. St. John I am unhappy because you are still angry with me. Let us be friends. I hope we are friends was the unmoved reply while he still watched the rising of the moon which he had been contemplating as I approached. No St. John we are not friends as we were. You know that. Are we not? That is wrong. For my part I wish you no ill and all good. I believe you St. John for I am sure you are incapable of wishing any one ill but as I am your kinswoman I should desire somewhat more of affection than that sort of general philanthropy you extend to mere strangers. Of course he said. Your wish is reasonable and I am far from regarding you as a stranger. This spoken in a cool tranquil tone was mortifying and baffling enough. Had I attended to the suggestions of pride and ire I should immediately have left him but something worked within me more strongly than those feelings could. I deeply venerated my cousin’s talent and principle. His friendship was of value to me to lose it tried me severely. I would not so soon relinquish the attempt to reconquer it. Must we part in this way St. John? And when you go to India will you leave me so without a kinder word than you have yet spoken? He now turned quite from the moon and faced me. When I go to India Jane will I leave you! What! do you not go to India? You said I could not unless I married you. And you will not marry me! You adhere to that resolution? Reader do you know as I do what terror those cold people can put into the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their displeasure? No. St. John I will not marry you. I adhere to my resolution. The avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward but it did not yet crash down. Once more why this refusal? he asked. Formerly I answered because you did not love me now I reply because you almost hate me. If I were to marry you you would kill me. You are killing me now. His lips and cheeks turned white—quite white. I should kill you—I am killing you? Your words are such as ought not to be used violent unfeminine and untrue. They betray an unfortunate state of mind they merit severe reproof they would seem inexcusable but that it is the duty of man to forgive his fellow even until seventy-and-seven times. I had finished the business now. While earnestly wishing to erase from his mind the trace of my former offence I had stamped on that tenacious surface another and far deeper impression I had burnt it in. Now you will indeed hate me I said. It is useless to attempt to conciliate you I see I have made an eternal enemy of you. A fresh wrong did these words inflict the worse because they touched on the truth. That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary spasm. I knew the steely ire I had whetted. I was heart-wrung. You utterly misinterpret my words I said at once seizing his hand I have no intention to grieve or pain you—indeed I have not. Most bitterly he smiled—most decidedly he withdrew his hand from mine. And now you recall your promise and will not go to India at all I presume? said he after a considerable pause. Yes I will as your assistant I answered. A very long silence succeeded. What struggle there was in him between Nature and Grace in this interval I cannot tell only singular gleams scintillated in his eyes and strange shadows passed over his face. He spoke at last. I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your age proposing to accompany abroad a single man of mine. I proved it to you in such terms as I should have thought would have prevented your ever again alluding to the plan. That you have done so I regret—for your sake. I interrupted him. Anything like a tangible reproach gave me courage at once. Keep to common sense St. John you are verging on nonsense. You pretend to be shocked by what I have said. You are not really shocked for with your superior mind you cannot be either so dull or so conceited as to misunderstand my meaning. I say again I will be your curate if you like but never your wife. Again he turned lividly pale but as before controlled his passion perfectly. He answered emphatically but calmly— A female curate who is not my wife would never suit me. With me then it seems you cannot go but if you are sincere in your offer I will while in town speak to a married missionary whose wife needs a coadjutor. Your own fortune will make you independent of the Society’s aid and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your promise and deserting the band you engaged to join. Now I never had as the reader knows either given any formal promise or entered into any engagement and this language was all much too hard and much too despotic for the occasion. I replied— There is no dishonour no breach of promise no desertion in the case. I am not under the slightest obligation to go to India especially with strangers. With you I would have ventured much because I admire confide in and as a sister I love you but I am convinced that go when and with whom I would I should not live long in that climate. Ah! you are afraid of yourself he said curling his lip. I am. God did not give me my life to throw away and to do as you wish me would I begin to think be almost equivalent to committing suicide. Moreover before I definitively resolve on quitting England I will know for certain whether I cannot be of greater use by remaining in it than by leaving it. What do you mean? It would be fruitless to attempt to explain but there is a point on which I have long endured painful doubt and I can go nowhere till by some means that doubt is removed. I know where your heart turns and to what it clings. The interest you cherish is lawless and unconsecrated. Long since you ought to have crushed it now you should blush to allude to it. You think of Mr Rochester? It was true. I confessed it by silence. Are you going to seek Mr Rochester? I must find out what is become of him. It remains for me then he said to remember you in my prayers and to entreat God for you in all earnestness that you may not indeed become a castaway. I had thought I recognised in you one of the chosen. But God sees not as man sees His will be done— He opened the gate passed through it and strayed away down the glen. He was soon out of sight. On re-entering the parlour I found Diana standing at the window looking very thoughtful. Diana was a great deal taller than I she put her hand on my shoulder and stooping examined my face. Jane she said you are always agitated and pale now. I am sure there is something the matter. Tell me what business St. John and you have on hands. I have watched you this half hour from the window you must forgive my being such a spy but for a long time I have fancied I hardly know what. St. John is a strange being— She paused—I did not speak soon she resumed— That brother of mine cherishes peculiar views of some sort respecting you I am sure he has long distinguished you by a notice and interest he never showed to any one else—to what end? I wish he loved you—does he Jane? I put her cool hand to my hot forehead No Die not one whit. Then why does he follow you so with his eyes and get you so frequently alone with him and keep you so continually at his side? Mary and I had both concluded he wished you to marry him. He does—he has asked me to be his wife. Diana clapped her hands. That is just what we hoped and thought! And you will marry him Jane won’t you? And then he will stay in England. Far from that Diana his sole idea in proposing to me is to procure a fitting fellow-labourer in his Indian toils. What! He wishes you to go to India? Yes. Madness! she exclaimed. You would not live three months there I am certain. You never shall go you have not consented have you Jane? I have refused to marry him— And have consequently displeased him? she suggested. Deeply he will never forgive me I fear yet I offered to accompany him as his sister. It was frantic folly to do so Jane. Think of the task you undertook—one of incessant fatigue where fatigue kills even the strong and you are weak. St. John—you know him—would urge you to impossibilities with him there would be no permission to rest during the hot hours and unfortunately I have noticed whatever he exacts you force yourself to perform. I am astonished you found courage to refuse his hand. You do not love him then Jane? Not as a husband. Yet he is a handsome fellow. And I am so plain you see Die. We should never suit. Plain! You? Not at all. You are much too pretty as well as too good to be grilled alive in Calcutta. And again she earnestly conjured me to give up all thoughts of going out with her brother. I must indeed I said for when just now I repeated the offer of serving him for a deacon he expressed himself shocked at my want of decency. He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in proposing to accompany him unmarried as if I had not from the first hoped to find in him a brother and habitually regarded him as such. What makes you say he does not love you Jane? You should hear himself on the subject. He has again and again explained that it is not himself but his office he wishes to mate. He has told me I am formed for labour—not for love which is true no doubt. But in my opinion if I am not formed for love it follows that I am not formed for marriage. Would it not be strange Die to be chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool? Insupportable—unnatural—out of the question! And then I continued though I have only sisterly affection for him now yet if forced to be his wife I can imagine the possibility of conceiving an inevitable strange torturing kind of love for him because he is so talented and there is often a certain heroic grandeur in his look manner and conversation. In that case my lot would become unspeakably wretched. He would not want me to love him and if I showed the feeling he would make me sensible that it was a superfluity unrequired by him unbecoming in me. I know he would. And yet St. John is a good man said Diana. He is a good and a great man but he forgets pitilessly the feelings and claims of little people in pursuing his own large views. It is better therefore for the insignificant to keep out of his way lest in his progress he should trample them down. Here he comes! I will leave you Diana. And I hastened upstairs as I saw him entering the garden. But I was forced to meet him again at supper. During that meal he appeared just as composed as usual. I had thought he would hardly speak to me and I was certain he had given up the pursuit of his matrimonial scheme the sequel showed I was mistaken on both points. He addressed me precisely in his ordinary manner or what had of late been his ordinary manner—one scrupulously polite. No doubt he had invoked the help of the Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had roused in him and now believed he had forgiven me once more. For the evening reading before prayers he selected the twenty-first chapter of Revelation. It was at all times pleasant to listen while from his lips fell the words of the Bible never did his fine voice sound at once so sweet and full—never did his manner become so impressive in its noble simplicity as when he delivered the oracles of God and to-night that voice took a more solemn tone—that manner a more thrilling meaning—as he sat in the midst of his household circle the May moon shining in through the uncurtained window and rendering almost unnecessary the light of the candle on the table as he sat there bending over the great old Bible and described from its page the vision of the new heaven and the new earth—told how God would come to dwell with men how He would wipe away all tears from their eyes and promised that there should be no more death neither sorrow nor crying nor any more pain because the former things were passed away. The succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them especially as I felt by the slight indescribable alteration in sound that in uttering them his eye had turned on me. He that overcometh shall inherit all things and I will be his God and he shall be my son. But was slowly distinctly read the fearful the unbelieving &c. shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death. Henceforward I knew what fate St. John feared for me. A calm subdued triumph blent with a longing earnestness marked his enunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter. The reader believed his name was already written in the Lamb’s book of life and he yearned after the hour which should admit him to the city to which the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour which has no need of sun or moon to shine in it because the glory of God lightens it and the Lamb is the light thereof. In the prayer following the chapter all his energy gathered—all his stern zeal woke he was in deep earnest wrestling with God and resolved on a conquest. He supplicated strength for the weak-hearted guidance for wanderers from the fold a return even at the eleventh hour for those whom the temptations of the world and the flesh were luring from the narrow path. He asked he urged he claimed the boon of a brand snatched from the burning. Earnestness is ever deeply solemn first as I listened to that prayer I wondered at his then when it continued and rose I was touched by it and at last awed. He felt the greatness and goodness of his purpose so sincerely others who heard him plead for it could not but feel it too. The prayer over we took leave of him he was to go at a very early hour in the morning. Diana and Mary having kissed him left the room—in compliance I think with a whispered hint from him I tendered my hand and wished him a pleasant journey. Thank you Jane. As I said I shall return from Cambridge in a fortnight that space then is yet left you for reflection. If I listened to human pride I should say no more to you of marriage with me but I listen to my duty and keep steadily in view my first aim—to do all things to the glory of God. My Master was long-suffering so will I be. I cannot give you up to perdition as a vessel of wrath repent—resolve while there is yet time. Remember we are bid to work while it is day—warned that ‘the night cometh when no man shall work.’ Remember the fate of Dives who had his good things in this life. God give you strength to choose that better part which shall not be taken from you! He laid his hand on my head as he uttered the last words. He had spoken earnestly mildly his look was not indeed that of a lover beholding his mistress but it was that of a pastor recalling his wandering sheep—or better of a guardian angel watching the soul for which he is responsible. All men of talent whether they be men of feeling or not whether they be zealots or aspirants or despots—provided only they be sincere—have their sublime moments when they subdue and rule. I felt veneration for St. John—veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me at once to the point I had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease struggling with him—to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf of his existence and there lose my own. I was almost as hard beset by him now as I had been once before in a different way by another. I was a fool both times. To have yielded then would have been an error of principle to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment. So I think at this hour when I look back to the crisis through the quiet medium of time I was unconscious of folly at the instant. I stood motionless under my hierophant’s touch. My refusals were forgotten—my fears overcome—my wrestlings paralysed. The Impossible—i.e. my marriage with St. John—was fast becoming the Possible. All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep. Religion called—Angels beckoned—God commanded—life rolled together like a scroll—death’s gates opening showed eternity beyond it seemed that for safety and bliss there all here might be sacrificed in a second. The dim room was full of visions. Could you decide now? asked the missionary. The inquiry was put in gentle tones he drew me to him as gently. Oh that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force! I could resist St. John’s wrath I grew pliant as a reed under his kindness. Yet I knew all the time if I yielded now I should not the less be made to repent some day of my former rebellion. His nature was not changed by one hour of solemn prayer it was only elevated. I could decide if I were but certain I answered were I but convinced that it is God’s will I should marry you I could vow to marry you here and now—come afterwards what would! My prayers are heard! ejaculated St. John. He pressed his hand firmer on my head as if he claimed me he surrounded me with his arm almost as if he loved me I say almost—I knew the difference—for I had felt what it was to be loved but like him I had now put love out of the question and thought only of duty. I contended with my inward dimness of vision before which clouds yet rolled. I sincerely deeply fervently longed to do what was right and only that. Show me show me the path! I entreated of Heaven. I was excited more than I had ever been and whether what followed was the effect of excitement the reader shall judge. All the house was still for I believe all except St. John and myself were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out the room was full of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick I heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it through and passed at once to my head and extremities. The feeling was not like an electric shock but it was quite as sharp as strange as startling it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor from which they were now summoned and forced to wake. They rose expectant eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my bones. What have you heard? What do you see? asked St. John. I saw nothing but I heard a voice somewhere cry— Jane! Jane! Jane!—nothing more. O God! what is it? I gasped. I might have said Where is it? for it did not seem in the room—nor in the house—nor in the garden it did not come out of the air—nor from under the earth—nor from overhead. I had heard it—where or whence for ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being—a known loved well-remembered voice—that of Edward Fairfax Rochester and it spoke in pain and woe wildly eerily urgently. I am coming! I cried. Wait for me! Oh I will come! I flew to the door and looked into the passage it was dark. I ran out into the garden it was void. Where are you? I exclaimed. The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back—Where are you? I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs all was moorland loneliness and midnight hush. Down superstition! I commented as that spectre rose up black by the black yew at the gate. This is not thy deception nor thy witchcraft it is the work of nature. She was roused and did—no miracle—but her best. I broke from St. John who had followed and would have detained me. It was my time to assume ascendency. My powers were in play and in force. I told him to forbear question or remark I desired him to leave me I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is energy to command well enough obedience never fails. I mounted to my chamber locked myself in fell on my knees and prayed in my way—a different way to St. John’s but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet. I rose from the thanksgiving—took a resolve—and lay down unscared enlightened—eager but for the daylight. ', 'The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or two with arranging my things in my chamber drawers and wardrobe in the order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief absence. Meantime I heard St. John quit his room. He stopped at my door I feared he would knock—no but a slip of paper was passed under the door. I took it up. It bore these words— You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little longer you would have laid your hand on the Christian’s cross and the angel’s crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return this day fortnight. Meantime watch and pray that you enter not into temptation the spirit I trust is willing but the flesh I see is weak. I shall pray for you hourly.—Yours ST. JOHN. My spirit I answered mentally is willing to do what is right and my flesh I hope is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate it shall be strong enough to search—inquire—to grope an outlet from this cloud of doubt and find the open day of certainty. It was the first of June yet the morning was overcast and chilly rain beat fast on my casement. I heard the front-door open and St. John pass out. Looking through the window I saw him traverse the garden. He took the way over the misty moors in the direction of Whitcross—there he would meet the coach. In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track cousin thought I I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too have some to see and ask after in England before I depart for ever. It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the interval in walking softly about my room and pondering the visitation which had given my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward sensation I had experienced for I could recall it with all its unspeakable strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard again I questioned whence it came as vainly as before it seemed in me—not in the external world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression—a delusion? I could not conceive or believe it was more like an inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas’s prison it had opened the doors of the soul’s cell and loosed its bands—it had wakened it out of its sleep whence it sprang trembling listening aghast then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear and in my quaking heart and through my spirit which neither feared nor shook but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged to make independent of the cumbrous body. Ere many days I said as I terminated my musings I will know something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters have proved of no avail—personal inquiry shall replace them. At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a journey and should be absent at least four days. Alone Jane? they asked. Yes it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for some time been uneasy. They might have said as I have no doubt they thought that they had believed me to be without any friends save them for indeed I had often said so but with their true natural delicacy they abstained from comment except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was well enough to travel. I looked very pale she observed. I replied that nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind which I hoped soon to alleviate. It was easy to make my further arrangements for I was troubled with no inquiries—no surmises. Having once explained to them that I could not now be explicit about my plans they kindly and wisely acquiesced in the silence with which I pursued them according to me the privilege of free action I should under similar circumstances have accorded them. I left Moor House at three o’clock P.M. and soon after four I stood at the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross waiting the arrival of the coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst the silence of those solitary roads and desert hills I heard it approach from a great distance. It was the same vehicle whence a year ago I had alighted one summer evening on this very spot—how desolate and hopeless and objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I entered—not now obliged to part with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on the road to Thornfield I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home. It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from Whitcross on a Tuesday afternoon and early on the succeeding Thursday morning the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn situated in the midst of scenery whose green hedges and large fields and low pastoral hills how mild of feature and verdant of hue compared with the stern North-Midland moors of Morton! met my eye like the lineaments of a once familiar face. Yes I knew the character of this landscape I was sure we were near my bourne. How far is Thornfield Hall from here? I asked of the ostler. Just two miles ma’am across the fields. My journey is closed I thought to myself. I got out of the coach gave a box I had into the ostler’s charge to be kept till I called for it paid my fare satisfied the coachman and was going the brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn and I read in gilt letters The Rochester Arms. My heart leapt up I was already on my master’s very lands. It fell again the thought struck it— Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel for aught you know and then if he is at Thornfield Hall towards which you hasten who besides him is there? His lunatic wife and you have nothing to do with him you dare not speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost your labour—you had better go no farther urged the monitor. Ask information of the people at the inn they can give you all you seek they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that man and inquire if Mr Rochester be at home. The suggestion was sensible and yet I could not force myself to act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before me—the very fields through which I had hurried blind deaf distracted with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me on the morning I fled from Thornfield ere I well knew what course I had resolved to take I was in the midst of them. How fast I walked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to catch the first view of the well-known woods! With what feelings I welcomed single trees I knew and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between them! At last the woods rose the rookery clustered dark a loud cawing broke the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me on I hastened. Another field crossed—a lane threaded—and there were the courtyard walls—the back offices the house itself the rookery still hid. My first view of it shall be in front I determined where its bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at once and where I can single out my master’s very window perhaps he will be standing at it—he rises early perhaps he is now walking in the orchard or on the pavement in front. Could I but see him!—but a moment! Surely in that case I should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell—I am not certain. And if I did—what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me? I rave perhaps at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees or on the tideless sea of the south. I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard—turned its angle there was a gate just there opening into the meadow between two stone pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar I could peep round quietly at the full front of the mansion. I advanced my head with precaution desirous to ascertain if any bedroom window-blinds were yet drawn up battlements windows long front—all from this sheltered station were at my command. The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this survey. I wonder what they thought. They must have considered I was very careful and timid at first and that gradually I grew very bold and reckless. A peep and then a long stare and then a departure from my niche and a straying out into the meadow and a sudden stop full in front of the great mansion and a protracted hardy gaze towards it. What affectation of diffidence was this at first? they might have demanded what stupid regardlessness now? Hear an illustration reader. A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank he wishes to catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the grass careful to make no sound he pauses—fancying she has stirred he withdraws not for worlds would he be seen. All is still he again advances he bends above her a light veil rests on her features he lifts it bends lower now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty—warm and blooming and lovely in rest. How hurried was their first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not a moment since touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name and drops his burden and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries and gazes because he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter—by any movement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly he finds she is stone dead. I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house I saw a blackened ruin. No need to cower behind a gate-post indeed!—to peep up at chamber lattices fearing life was astir behind them! No need to listen for doors opening—to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk! The lawn the grounds were trodden and waste the portal yawned void. The front was as I had once seen it in a dream but a shell-like wall very high and very fragile-looking perforated with paneless windows no roof no battlements no chimneys—all had crashed in. And there was the silence of death about it the solitude of a lonesome wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here had never received an answer as well despatch epistles to a vault in a church aisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by what fate the Hall had fallen—by conflagration but how kindled? What story belonged to this disaster? What loss besides mortar and marble and wood-work had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked as well as property? If so whose? Dreadful question there was no one here to answer it—not even dumb sign mute token. In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated interior I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late occurrence. Winter snows I thought had drifted through that void arch winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements for amidst the drenched piles of rubbish spring had cherished vegetation grass and weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen rafters. And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck? In what land? Under what auspices? My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey church tower near the gates and I asked Is he with Damer de Rochester sharing the shelter of his narrow marble house? Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere but at the inn and thither ere long I returned. The host himself brought my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the door and sit down I had some questions to ask him. But when he complied I scarcely knew how to begin such horror had I of the possible answers. And yet the spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery. The host was a respectable-looking middle-aged man. You know Thornfield Hall of course? I managed to say at last. Yes ma’am I lived there once. Did you? Not in my time I thought you are a stranger to me. I was the late Mr Rochester’s butler he added. The late! I seem to have received with full force the blow I had been trying to evade. The late! I gasped. Is he dead? I mean the present gentleman Mr Edward’s father he explained. I breathed again my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured by these words that Mr Edward—my Mr Rochester God bless him wherever he was!—was at least alive was in short the present gentleman. Gladdening words! It seemed I could hear all that was to come—whatever the disclosures might be—with comparative tranquillity. Since he was not in the grave I could bear I thought to learn that he was at the Antipodes. Is Mr Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now? I asked knowing of course what the answer would be but yet desirous of deferring the direct question as to where he really was. No ma’am—oh no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a stranger in these parts or you would have heard what happened last autumn—Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin it was burnt down just about harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable property destroyed hardly any of the furniture could be saved. The fire broke out at dead of night and before the engines arrived from Millcote the building was one mass of flame. It was a terrible spectacle I witnessed it myself. At dead of night! I muttered. Yes that was ever the hour of fatality at Thornfield. Was it known how it originated? I demanded. They guessed ma’am they guessed. Indeed I should say it was ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware he continued edging his chair a little nearer the table and speaking low that there was a lady—a—a lunatic kept in the house? I have heard something of it. She was kept in very close confinement ma’am people even for some years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw her they only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture. They said Mr Edward had brought her from abroad and some believed she had been his mistress. But a queer thing happened a year since—a very queer thing. I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to the main fact. And this lady? This lady ma’am he answered turned out to be Mr Rochester’s wife! The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There was a young lady a governess at the Hall that Mr Rochester fell in— But the fire I suggested. I’m coming to that ma’am—that Mr Edward fell in love with. The servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was he was after her continually. They used to watch him—servants will you know ma’am—and he set store on her past everything for all nobody but him thought her so very handsome. She was a little small thing they say almost like a child. I never saw her myself but I’ve heard Leah the house-maid tell of her. Leah liked her well enough. Mr Rochester was about forty and this governess not twenty and you see when gentlemen of his age fall in love with girls they are often like as if they were bewitched. Well he would marry her. You shall tell me this part of the story another time I said but now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire. Was it suspected that this lunatic Mrs Rochester had any hand in it? You’ve hit it ma’am it’s quite certain that it was her and nobody but her that set it going. She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs Poole—an able woman in her line and very trustworthy but for one fault—a fault common to a deal of them nurses and matrons—she kept a private bottle of gin by her and now and then took a drop over-much. It is excusable for she had a hard life of it but still it was dangerous for when Mrs Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water the mad lady who was as cunning as a witch would take the keys out of her pocket let herself out of her chamber and go roaming about the house doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They say she had nearly burnt her husband in his bed once but I don’t know about that. However on this night she set fire first to the hangings of the room next her own and then she got down to a lower storey and made her way to the chamber that had been the governess’s—she was like as if she knew somehow how matters had gone on and had a spite at her—and she kindled the bed there but there was nobody sleeping in it fortunately. The governess had run away two months before and for all Mr Rochester sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he had in the world he never could hear a word of her and he grew savage—quite savage on his disappointment he never was a wild man but he got dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone too. He sent Mrs Fairfax the housekeeper away to her friends at a distance but he did it handsomely for he settled an annuity on her for life and she deserved it—she was a very good woman. Miss Adèle a ward he had was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry and shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall. What! did he not leave England? Leave England? Bless you no! He would not cross the door-stones of the house except at night when he walked just like a ghost about the grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses—which it is my opinion he had for a more spirited bolder keener gentleman than he was before that midge of a governess crossed him you never saw ma’am. He was not a man given to wine or cards or racing as some are and he was not so very handsome but he had a courage and a will of his own if ever man had. I knew him from a boy you see and for my part I have often wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to Thornfield Hall. Then Mr Rochester was at home when the fire broke out? Yes indeed was he and he went up to the attics when all was burning above and below and got the servants out of their beds and helped them down himself and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And then they called out to him that she was on the roof where she was standing waving her arms above the battlements and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off I saw her and heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman and had long black hair we could see it streaming against the flames as she stood. I witnessed and several more witnessed Mr Rochester ascend through the sky-light on to the roof we heard him call ‘Bertha!’ We saw him approach her and then ma’am she yelled and gave a spring and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement. The next minute she lay smashed on the pavement Dead? Dead! Ay dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were scattered. Good God! You may well say so ma’am it was frightful! He shuddered. And afterwards? I urged. Well ma’am afterwards the house was burnt to the ground there are only some bits of walls standing now. Were any other lives lost? No—perhaps it would have been better if there had. What do you mean? Poor Mr Edward! he ejaculated I little thought ever to have seen it! Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his first marriage secret and wanting to take another wife while he had one living but I pity him for my part. You said he was alive? I exclaimed. Yes yes he is alive but many think he had better be dead. Why? How? My blood was again running cold. Where is he? I demanded. Is he in England? Ay—ay—he’s in England he can’t get out of England I fancy—he’s a fixture now. What agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it. He is stone-blind he said at last. Yes he is stone-blind is Mr Edward. I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength to ask what had caused this calamity. It was all his own courage and a body may say his kindness in a way ma’am he wouldn’t leave the house till every one else was out before him. As he came down the great staircase at last after Mrs Rochester had flung herself from the battlements there was a great crash—all fell. He was taken out from under the ruins alive but sadly hurt a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly but one eye was knocked out and one hand so crushed that Mr Carter the surgeon had to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed he lost the sight of that also. He is now helpless indeed—blind and a cripple. Where is he? Where does he now live? At Ferndean a manor-house on a farm he has about thirty miles off quite a desolate spot. Who is with him? Old John and his wife he would have none else. He is quite broken down they say. Have you any sort of conveyance? We have a chaise ma’am a very handsome chaise. Let it be got ready instantly and if your post-boy can drive me to Ferndean before dark this day I’ll pay both you and him twice the hire you usually demand. ', 'The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity moderate size and no architectural pretensions deep buried in a wood. I had heard of it before. Mr Rochester often spoke of it and sometimes went there. His father had purchased the estate for the sake of the game covers. He would have let the house but could find no tenant in consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious site. Ferndean then remained uninhabited and unfurnished with the exception of some two or three rooms fitted up for the accommodation of the squire when he went there in the season to shoot. To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the characteristics of sad sky cold gale and continued small penetrating rain. The last mile I performed on foot having dismissed the chaise and driver with the double remuneration I had promised. Even when within a very short distance of the manor-house you could see nothing of it so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about it. Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter and passing through them I found myself at once in the twilight of close-ranked trees. There was a grass-grown track descending the forest aisle between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches. I followed it expecting soon to reach the dwelling but it stretched on and on it wound far and farther no sign of habitation or grounds was visible. I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way. The darkness of natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me. I looked round in search of another road. There was none all was interwoven stem columnar trunk dense summer foliage—no opening anywhere. I proceeded at last my way opened the trees thinned a little presently I beheld a railing then the house—scarce by this dim light distinguishable from the trees so dank and green were its decaying walls. Entering a portal fastened only by a latch I stood amidst a space of enclosed ground from which the wood swept away in a semicircle. There were no flowers no garden-beds only a broad gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat and this set in the heavy frame of the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front the windows were latticed and narrow the front door was narrow too one step led up to it. The whole looked as the host of the Rochester Arms had said quite a desolate spot. It was as still as a church on a week-day the pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage. Can there be life here? I asked. Yes life of some kind there was for I heard a movement—that narrow front-door was unclosing and some shape was about to issue from the grange. It opened slowly a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the step a man without a hat he stretched forth his hand as if to feel whether it rained. Dusk as it was I had recognised him—it was my master Edward Fairfax Rochester and no other. I stayed my step almost my breath and stood to watch him—to examine him myself unseen and alas! to him invisible. It was a sudden meeting and one in which rapture was kept well in check by pain. I had no difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation my step from hasty advance. His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever his port was still erect his hair was still raven black nor were his features altered or sunk not in one year’s space by any sorrow could his athletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted. But in his countenance I saw a change that looked desperate and brooding—that reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird dangerous to approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished might look as looked that sightless Samson. And reader do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity?—if you do you little know me. A soft hope blent with my sorrow that soon I should dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock and on those lips so sternly sealed beneath it but not yet. I would not accost him yet. He descended the one step and advanced slowly and gropingly towards the grass-plat. Where was his daring stride now? Then he paused as if he knew not which way to turn. He lifted his hand and opened his eyelids gazed blank and with a straining effort on the sky and toward the amphitheatre of trees one saw that all to him was void darkness. He stretched his right hand the left arm the mutilated one he kept hidden in his bosom he seemed to wish by touch to gain an idea of what lay around him he met but vacancy still for the trees were some yards off where he stood. He relinquished the endeavour folded his arms and stood quiet and mute in the rain now falling fast on his uncovered head. At this moment John approached him from some quarter. Will you take my arm sir? he said there is a heavy shower coming on had you not better go in? Let me alone was the answer. John withdrew without having observed me. Mr Rochester now tried to walk about vainly—all was too uncertain. He groped his way back to the house and re-entering it closed the door. I now drew near and knocked John’s wife opened for me. Mary I said how are you? She started as if she had seen a ghost I calmed her. To her hurried Is it really you miss come at this late hour to this lonely place? I answered by taking her hand and then I followed her into the kitchen where John now sat by a good fire. I explained to them in few words that I had heard all which had happened since I left Thornfield and that I was come to see Mr Rochester. I asked John to go down to the turn-pike-house where I had dismissed the chaise and bring my trunk which I had left there and then while I removed my bonnet and shawl I questioned Mary as to whether I could be accommodated at the Manor House for the night and finding that arrangements to that effect though difficult would not be impossible I informed her I should stay. Just at this moment the parlour-bell rang. When you go in said I tell your master that a person wishes to speak to him but do not give my name. I don’t think he will see you she answered he refuses everybody. When she returned I inquired what he had said. You are to send in your name and your business she replied. She then proceeded to fill a glass with water and place it on a tray together with candles. Is that what he rang for? I asked. Yes he always has candles brought in at dark though he is blind. Give the tray to me I will carry it in. I took it from her hand she pointed me out the parlour door. The tray shook as I held it the water spilt from the glass my heart struck my ribs loud and fast. Mary opened the door for me and shut it behind me. This parlour looked gloomy a neglected handful of fire burnt low in the grate and leaning over it with his head supported against the high old-fashioned mantelpiece appeared the blind tenant of the room. His old dog Pilot lay on one side removed out of the way and coiled up as if afraid of being inadvertently trodden upon. Pilot pricked up his ears when I came in then he jumped up with a yelp and a whine and bounded towards me he almost knocked the tray from my hands. I set it on the table then patted him and said softly Lie down! Mr Rochester turned mechanically to see what the commotion was but as he saw nothing he returned and sighed. Give me the water Mary he said. I approached him with the now only half-filled glass Pilot followed me still excited. What is the matter? he inquired. Down Pilot! I again said. He checked the water on its way to his lips and seemed to listen he drank and put the glass down. This is you Mary is it not? Mary is in the kitchen I answered. He put out his hand with a quick gesture but not seeing where I stood he did not touch me. Who is this? Who is this? he demanded trying as it seemed to see with those sightless eyes—unavailing and distressing attempt! Answer me—speak again! he ordered imperiously and aloud. Will you have a little more water sir? I spilt half of what was in the glass I said. Who is it? What is it? Who speaks? Pilot knows me and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this evening I answered. Great God!—what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me? No delusion—no madness your mind sir is too strong for delusion your health too sound for frenzy. And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I cannot see but I must feel or my heart will stop and my brain burst. Whatever—whoever you are—be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live! He groped I arrested his wandering hand and prisoned it in both mine. Her very fingers! he cried her small slight fingers! If so there must be more of her. The muscular hand broke from my custody my arm was seized my shoulder—neck—waist—I was entwined and gathered to him. Is it Jane? What is it? This is her shape—this is her size— And this her voice I added. She is all here her heart too. God bless you sir! I am glad to be so near you again. Jane Eyre!—Jane Eyre was all he said. My dear master I answered I am Jane Eyre I have found you out—I am come back to you. In truth?—in the flesh? My living Jane? You touch me sir—you hold me and fast enough I am not cold like a corpse nor vacant like air am I? My living darling! These are certainly her limbs and these her features but I cannot be so blest after all my misery. It is a dream such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to my heart as I do now and kissed her as thus—and felt that she loved me and trusted that she would not leave me. Which I never will sir from this day. Never will says the vision? But I always woke and found it an empty mockery and I was desolate and abandoned—my life dark lonely hopeless—my soul athirst and forbidden to drink—my heart famished and never to be fed. Gentle soft dream nestling in my arms now you will fly too as your sisters have all fled before you but kiss me before you go—embrace me Jane. There sir—and there!’ I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes—I swept his hair from his brow and kissed that too. He suddenly seemed to arouse himself the conviction of the reality of all this seized him. It is you—is it Jane? You are come back to me then? I am. And you do not lie dead in some ditch under some stream? And you are not a pining outcast amongst strangers? No sir! I am an independent woman now. Independent! What do you mean Jane? My uncle in Madeira is dead and he left me five thousand pounds. Ah! this is practical—this is real! he cried I should never dream that. Besides there is that peculiar voice of hers so animating and piquant as well as soft it cheers my withered heart it puts life into it.—What Janet! Are you an independent woman? A rich woman? Quite rich sir. If you won’t let me live with you I can build a house of my own close up to your door and you may come and sit in my parlour when you want company of an evening. But as you are rich Jane you have now no doubt friends who will look after you and not suffer you to devote yourself to a blind lameter like me? I told you I am independent sir as well as rich I am my own mistress. And you will stay with me? Certainly—unless you object. I will be your neighbour your nurse your housekeeper. I find you lonely I will be your companion—to read to you to walk with you to sit with you to wait on you to be eyes and hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy my dear master you shall not be left desolate so long as I live. He replied not he seemed serious—abstracted he sighed he half-opened his lips as if to speak he closed them again. I felt a little embarrassed. Perhaps I had too rashly over-leaped conventionalities and he like St. John saw impropriety in my inconsiderateness. I had indeed made my proposal from the idea that he wished and would ask me to be his wife an expectation not the less certain because unexpressed had buoyed me up that he would claim me at once as his own. But no hint to that effect escaping him and his countenance becoming more overcast I suddenly remembered that I might have been all wrong and was perhaps playing the fool unwittingly and I began gently to withdraw myself from his arms—but he eagerly snatched me closer. No—no—Jane you must not go. No—I have touched you heard you felt the comfort of your presence—the sweetness of your consolation I cannot give up these joys. I have little left in myself—I must have you. The world may laugh—may call me absurd selfish—but it does not signify. My very soul demands you it will be satisfied or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame. Well sir I will stay with you I have said so. Yes—but you understand one thing by staying with me and I understand another. You perhaps could make up your mind to be about my hand and chair—to wait on me as a kind little nurse for you have an affectionate heart and a generous spirit which prompt you to make sacrifices for those you pity and that ought to suffice for me no doubt. I suppose I should now entertain none but fatherly feelings for you do you think so? Come—tell me. I will think what you like sir I am content to be only your nurse if you think it better. But you cannot always be my nurse Janet you are young—you must marry one day. I don’t care about being married. You should care Janet if I were what I once was I would try to make you care—but—a sightless block! He relapsed again into gloom. I on the contrary became more cheerful and took fresh courage these last words gave me an insight as to where the difficulty lay and as it was no difficulty with me I felt quite relieved from my previous embarrassment. I resumed a livelier vein of conversation. It is time some one undertook to rehumanise you said I parting his thick and long uncut locks for I see you are being metamorphosed into a lion or something of that sort. You have a ‘faux air’ of Nebuchadnezzar in the fields about you that is certain your hair reminds me of eagles’ feathers whether your nails are grown like birds’ claws or not I have not yet noticed. On this arm I have neither hand nor nails he said drawing the mutilated limb from his breast and showing it to me. It is a mere stump—a ghastly sight! Don’t you think so Jane? It is a pity to see it and a pity to see your eyes—and the scar of fire on your forehead and the worst of it is one is in danger of loving you too well for all this and making too much of you. I thought you would be revolted Jane when you saw my arm and my cicatrised visage. Did you? Don’t tell me so—lest I should say something disparaging to your judgment. Now let me leave you an instant to make a better fire and have the hearth swept up. Can you tell when there is a good fire? Yes with the right eye I see a glow—a ruddy haze. And you see the candles? Very dimly—each is a luminous cloud. Can you see me? No my fairy but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you. When do you take supper? I never take supper. But you shall have some to-night. I am hungry so are you I daresay only you forget. Summoning Mary I soon had the room in more cheerful order I prepared him likewise a comfortable repast. My spirits were excited and with pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper and for a long time after. There was no harassing restraint no repressing of glee and vivacity with him for with him I was at perfect ease because I knew I suited him all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him. Delightful consciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature in his presence I thoroughly lived and he lived in mine. Blind as he was smiles played over his face joy dawned on his forehead his lineaments softened and warmed. After supper he began to ask me many questions of where I had been what I had been doing how I had found him out but I gave him only very partial replies it was too late to enter into particulars that night. Besides I wished to touch no deep-thrilling chord—to open no fresh well of emotion in his heart my sole present aim was to cheer him. Cheered as I have said he was and yet but by fits. If a moment’s silence broke the conversation he would turn restless touch me then say Jane. You are altogether a human being Jane? You are certain of that? You are altogether a human being Jane? You are certain of that? I conscientiously believe so Mr Rochester. Yet how on this dark and doleful evening could you so suddenly rise on my lone hearth? I stretched my hand to take a glass of water from a hireling and it was given me by you I asked a question expecting John’s wife to answer me and your voice spoke at my ear. Because I had come in in Mary’s stead with the tray. And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you. Who can tell what a dark dreary hopeless life I have dragged on for months past? Doing nothing expecting nothing merging night in day feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out of hunger when I forgot to eat and then a ceaseless sorrow and at times a very delirium of desire to behold my Jane again. Yes for her restoration I longed far more than for that of my lost sight. How can it be that Jane is with me and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? To-morrow I fear I shall find her no more. A commonplace practical reply out of the train of his own disturbed ideas was I was sure the best and most reassuring for him in this frame of mind. I passed my finger over his eyebrows and remarked that they were scorched and that I would apply something which would make them grow as broad and black as ever. Where is the use of doing me good in any way beneficent spirit when at some fatal moment you will again desert me—passing like a shadow whither and how to me unknown and for me remaining afterwards undiscoverable? Have you a pocket-comb about you sir? What for Jane? Just to comb out this shaggy black mane. I find you rather alarming when I examine you close at hand you talk of my being a fairy but I am sure you are more like a brownie. Am I hideous Jane? Very sir you always were you know. Humph! The wickedness has not been taken out of you wherever you have sojourned. Yet I have been with good people far better than you a hundred times better people possessed of ideas and views you never entertained in your life quite more refined and exalted. Who the deuce have you been with? If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of your head and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of my substantiality. Who have you been with Jane? You shall not get it out of me to-night sir you must wait till to-morrow to leave my tale half told will you know be a sort of security that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish it. By the bye I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass of water then I must bring an egg at the least to say nothing of fried ham. You mocking changeling—fairy-born and human-bred! You make me feel as I have not felt these twelve months. If Saul could have had you for his David the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the harp. There sir you are redd up and made decent. Now I’ll leave you I have been travelling these last three days and I believe I am tired. Good night. Just one word Jane were there only ladies in the house where you have been? I laughed and made my escape still laughing as I ran upstairs. A good idea! I thought with glee. I see I have the means of fretting him out of his melancholy for some time to come. Very early the next morning I heard him up and astir wandering from one room to another. As soon as Mary came down I heard the question Is Miss Eyre here? Then Which room did you put her into? Was it dry? Is she up? Go and ask if she wants anything and when she will come down. I came down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast. Entering the room very softly I had a view of him before he discovered my presence. It was mournful indeed to witness the subjugation of that vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity. He sat in his chair—still but not at rest expectant evidently the lines of now habitual sadness marking his strong features. His countenance reminded one of a lamp quenched waiting to be re-lit—and alas! it was not himself that could now kindle the lustre of animated expression he was dependent on another for that office! I had meant to be gay and careless but the powerlessness of the strong man touched my heart to the quick still I accosted him with what vivacity I could. It is a bright sunny morning sir I said. The rain is over and gone and there is a tender shining after it you shall have a walk soon. I had wakened the glow his features beamed. Oh you are indeed there my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone not vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago singing high over the wood but its song had no music for me any more than the rising sun had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane’s tongue to my ear I am glad it is not naturally a silent one all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence. The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence just as if a royal eagle chained to a perch should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor. But I would not be lachrymose I dashed off the salt drops and busied myself with preparing breakfast. Most of the morning was spent in the open air. I led him out of the wet and wild wood into some cheerful fields I described to him how brilliantly green they were how the flowers and hedges looked refreshed how sparklingly blue was the sky. I sought a seat for him in a hidden and lovely spot a dry stump of a tree nor did I refuse to let him when seated place me on his knee. Why should I when both he and I were happier near than apart? Pilot lay beside us all was quiet. He broke out suddenly while clasping me in his arms— Cruel cruel deserter! Oh Jane what did I feel when I discovered you had fled from Thornfield and when I could nowhere find you and after examining your apartment ascertained that you had taken no money nor anything which could serve as an equivalent! A pearl necklace I had given you lay untouched in its little casket your trunks were left corded and locked as they had been prepared for the bridal tour. What could my darling do I asked left destitute and penniless? And what did she do? Let me hear now. Thus urged I began the narrative of my experience for the last year. I softened considerably what related to the three days of wandering and starvation because to have told him all would have been to inflict unnecessary pain the little I did say lacerated his faithful heart deeper than I wished. I should not have left him thus he said without any means of making my way I should have told him my intention. I should have confided in him he would never have forced me to be his mistress. Violent as he had seemed in his despair he in truth loved me far too well and too tenderly to constitute himself my tyrant he would have given me half his fortune without demanding so much as a kiss in return rather than I should have flung myself friendless on the wide world. I had endured he was certain more than I had confessed to him. Well whatever my sufferings had been they were very short I answered and then I proceeded to tell him how I had been received at Moor House how I had obtained the office of schoolmistress &c. The accession of fortune the discovery of my relations followed in due order. Of course St. John Rivers’ name came in frequently in the progress of my tale. When I had done that name was immediately taken up. This St. John then is your cousin? Yes. You have spoken of him often do you like him? He was a very good man sir I could not help liking him. A good man. Does that mean a respectable well-conducted man of fifty? Or what does it mean? St John was only twenty-nine sir. ‘Jeune encore’ as the French say. Is he a person of low stature phlegmatic and plain? A person whose goodness consists rather in his guiltlessness of vice than in his prowess in virtue. He is untiringly active. Great and exalted deeds are what he lives to perform. But his brain? That is probably rather soft? He means well but you shrug your shoulders to hear him talk? He talks little sir what he does say is ever to the point. His brain is first-rate I should think not impressible but vigorous. Is he an able man then? Truly able. A thoroughly educated man? St. John is an accomplished and profound scholar. His manners I think you said are not to your taste?—priggish and parsonic? I never mentioned his manners but unless I had a very bad taste they must suit it they are polished calm and gentlemanlike. His appearance—I forget what description you gave of his appearance—a sort of raw curate half strangled with his white neckcloth and stilted up on his thick-soled high-lows eh? St. John dresses well. He is a handsome man tall fair with blue eyes and a Grecian profile. Aside. Damn him!—To me. Did you like him Jane? Yes Mr Rochester I liked him but you asked me that before. I perceived of course the drift of my interlocutor. Jealousy had got hold of him she stung him but the sting was salutary it gave him respite from the gnawing fang of melancholy. I would not therefore immediately charm the snake. Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee Miss Eyre? was the next somewhat unexpected observation. Why not Mr Rochester? The picture you have just drawn is suggestive of a rather too overwhelming contrast. Your words have delineated very prettily a graceful Apollo he is present to your imagination—tall fair blue-eyed and with a Grecian profile. Your eyes dwell on a Vulcan—a real blacksmith brown broad-shouldered and blind and lame into the bargain. I never thought of it before but you certainly are rather like Vulcan sir. Well you can leave me ma’am but before you go and he retained me by a firmer grasp than ever you will be pleased just to answer me a question or two. He paused. What questions Mr Rochester? Then followed this cross-examination. St. John made you schoolmistress of Morton before he knew you were his cousin? Yes. You would often see him? He would visit the school sometimes? Daily. He would approve of your plans Jane? I know they would be clever for you are a talented creature! He approved of them—yes. He would discover many things in you he could not have expected to find? Some of your accomplishments are not ordinary. I don’t know about that. You had a little cottage near the school you say did he ever come there to see you? Now and then. Of an evening? Once or twice. A pause. How long did you reside with him and his sisters after the cousinship was discovered? Five months. Did Rivers spend much time with the ladies of his family? Yes the back parlour was both his study and ours he sat near the window and we by the table. Did he study much? A good deal. What? Hindostanee. And what did you do meantime? I learnt German at first. Did he teach you? He did not understand German. Did he teach you nothing? A little Hindostanee. Rivers taught you Hindostanee? Yes sir. And his sisters also? No. Only you? Only me. Did you ask to learn? No. He wished to teach you? Yes. A second pause. Why did he wish it? Of what use could Hindostanee be to you? He intended me to go with him to India. Ah! here I reach the root of the matter. He wanted you to marry him? He asked me to marry him. That is a fiction—an impudent invention to vex me. I beg your pardon it is the literal truth he asked me more than once and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could be. Miss Eyre I repeat it you can leave me. How often am I to say the same thing? Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee when I have given you notice to quit? Because I am comfortable there. No Jane you are not comfortable there because your heart is not with me it is with this cousin—this St. John. Oh till this moment I thought my little Jane was all mine! I had a belief she loved me even when she left me that was an atom of sweet in much bitter. Long as we have been parted hot tears as I have wept over our separation I never thought that while I was mourning her she was loving another! But it is useless grieving. Jane leave me go and marry Rivers. Shake me off then sir—push me away for I’ll not leave you of my own accord. Jane I ever like your tone of voice it still renews hope it sounds so truthful. When I hear it it carries me back a year. I forget that you have formed a new tie. But I am not a fool—go— Where must I go sir? Your own way—with the husband you have chosen. Who is that? You know—this St. John Rivers. He is not my husband nor ever will be. He does not love me I do not love him. He loves as he can love and that is not as you love a beautiful young lady called Rosamond. He wanted to marry me only because he thought I should make a suitable missionary’s wife which she would not have done. He is good and great but severe and for me cold as an iceberg. He is not like you sir I am not happy at his side nor near him nor with him. He has no indulgence for me—no fondness. He sees nothing attractive in me not even youth—only a few useful mental points.—Then I must leave you sir to go to him? I shuddered involuntarily and clung instinctively closer to my blind but beloved master. He smiled. What Jane! Is this true? Is such really the state of matters between you and Rivers? Absolutely sir! Oh you need not be jealous! I wanted to tease you a little to make you less sad I thought anger would be better than grief. But if you wish me to love you could you but see how much I do love you you would be proud and content. All my heart is yours sir it belongs to you and with you it would remain were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence for ever. Again as he kissed me painful thoughts darkened his aspect. My seared vision! My crippled strength! he murmured regretfully. I caressed in order to soothe him. I knew of what he was thinking and wanted to speak for him but dared not. As he turned aside his face a minute I saw a tear slide from under the sealed eyelid and trickle down the manly cheek. My heart swelled. I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchard he remarked ere long. And what right would that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness? You are no ruin sir—no lightning-struck tree you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots whether you ask them or not because they take delight in your bountiful shadow and as they grow they will lean towards you and wind round you because your strength offers them so safe a prop. Again he smiled I gave him comfort. You speak of friends Jane? he asked. Yes of friends I answered rather hesitatingly for I knew I meant more than friends but could not tell what other word to employ. He helped me. Ah! Jane. But I want a wife. Do you sir? Yes is it news to you? Of course you said nothing about it before. Is it unwelcome news? That depends on circumstances sir—on your choice. Which you shall make for me Jane. I will abide by your decision. Choose then sir—her who loves you best. I will at least choose—her I love best. Jane will you marry me? Yes sir. A poor blind man whom you will have to lead about by the hand? Yes sir. A crippled man twenty years older than you whom you will have to wait on? Yes sir. Truly Jane? Most truly sir. Oh! my darling! God bless you and reward you! Mr Rochester if ever I did a good deed in my life—if ever I thought a good thought—if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer—if ever I wished a righteous wish—I am rewarded now. To be your wife is for me to be as happy as I can be on earth. Because you delight in sacrifice. Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value—to press my lips to what I love—to repose on what I trust is that to make a sacrifice? If so then certainly I delight in sacrifice. And to bear with my infirmities Jane to overlook my deficiencies. Which are none sir to me. I love you better now when I can really be useful to you than I did in your state of proud independence when you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector. Hitherto I have hated to be helped—to be led henceforth I feel I shall hate it no more. I did not like to put my hand into a hireling’s but it is pleasant to feel it circled by Jane’s little fingers. I preferred utter loneliness to the constant attendance of servants but Jane’s soft ministry will be a perpetual joy. Jane suits me do I suit her? To the finest fibre of my nature sir. The case being so we have nothing in the world to wait for we must be married instantly. He looked and spoke with eagerness his old impetuosity was rising. We must become one flesh without any delay Jane there is but the licence to get—then we marry. Mr Rochester I have just discovered the sun is far declined from its meridian and Pilot is actually gone home to his dinner. Let me look at your watch. Fasten it into your girdle Janet and keep it henceforward I have no use for it. It is nearly four o’clock in the afternoon sir. Don’t you feel hungry? The third day from this must be our wedding-day Jane. Never mind fine clothes and jewels now all that is not worth a fillip. The sun has dried up all the rain-drops sir. The breeze is still it is quite hot. Do you know Jane I have your little pearl necklace at this moment fastened round my bronze scrag under my cravat? I have worn it since the day I lost my only treasure as a memento of her. We will go home through the wood that will be the shadiest way. He pursued his own thoughts without heeding me. Jane! you think me I daresay an irreligious dog but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees but far clearer judges not as man judges but far more wisely. I did wrong I would have sullied my innocent flower—breathed guilt on its purity the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I in my stiff-necked rebellion almost cursed the dispensation instead of bending to the decree I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course disasters came thick on me I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. His chastisements are mighty and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my strength but what is it now when I must give it over to foreign guidance as a child does its weakness? Of late Jane—only—only of late—I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse repentance the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray very brief prayers they were but very sincere. Some days since nay I can number them—four it was last Monday night a singular mood came over me one in which grief replaced frenzy—sorrow sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I could nowhere find you you must be dead. Late that night—perhaps it might be between eleven and twelve o’clock—ere I retired to my dreary rest I supplicated God that if it seemed good to Him I might soon be taken from this life and admitted to that world to come where there was still hope of rejoining Jane. I was in my own room and sitting by the window which was open it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air though I could see no stars and only by a vague luminous haze knew the presence of a moon. I longed for thee Janet! Oh I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I asked of God at once in anguish and humility if I had not been long enough desolate afflicted tormented and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured I acknowledged—that I could scarcely endure more I pleaded and the alpha and omega of my heart’s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words—‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ Did you speak these words aloud? I did Jane. If any listener had heard me he would have thought me mad I pronounced them with such frantic energy. And it was last Monday night somewhere near midnight? Yes but the time is of no consequence what followed is the strange point. You will think me superstitious—some superstition I have in my blood and always had nevertheless this is true—true at least it is that I heard what I now relate. As I exclaimed ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ a voice—I cannot tell whence the voice came but I know whose voice it was—replied ‘I am coming wait for me’ and a moment after went whispering on the wind the words—‘Where are you?’ I’ll tell you if I can the idea the picture these words opened to my mind yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. Ferndean is buried as you see in a heavy wood where sound falls dull and dies unreverberating. ‘Where are you?’ seemed spoken amongst mountains for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow I could have deemed that in some wild lone scene I and Jane were meeting. In spirit I believe we must have met. You no doubt were at that hour in unconscious sleep Jane perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine for those were your accents—as certain as I live—they were yours! Reader it was on Monday night—near midnight—that I too had received the mysterious summons those were the very words by which I replied to it. I listened to Mr Rochester’s narrative but made no disclosure in return. The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be communicated or discussed. If I told anything my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer and that mind yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural. I kept these things then and pondered them in my heart. You cannot now wonder continued my master that when you rose upon me so unexpectedly last night I had difficulty in believing you any other than a mere voice and vision something that would melt to silence and annihilation as the midnight whisper and mountain echo had melted before. Now I thank God! I know it to be otherwise. Yes I thank God! He put me off his knee rose and reverently lifting his hat from his brow and bending his sightless eyes to the earth he stood in mute devotion. Only the last words of the worship were audible. I thank my Maker that in the midst of judgment he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto! Then he stretched his hand out to be led. I took that dear hand held it a moment to my lips then let it pass round my shoulder being so much lower of stature than he I served both for his prop and guide. We entered the wood and wended homeward. ', 'Reader I married him. A quiet wedding we had he and I the parson and clerk were alone present. When we got back from church I went into the kitchen of the manor-house where Mary was cooking the dinner and John cleaning the knives and I said— Mary I have been married to Mr Rochester this morning. The housekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic order of people to whom one may at any time safely communicate a remarkable piece of news without incurring the danger of having one’s ears pierced by some shrill ejaculation and subsequently stunned by a torrent of wordy wonderment. Mary did look up and she did stare at me the ladle with which she was basting a pair of chickens roasting at the fire did for some three minutes hang suspended in air and for the same space of time John’s knives also had rest from the polishing process but Mary bending again over the roast said only— Have you Miss? Well for sure! A short time after she pursued—I seed you go out with the master but I didn’t know you were gone to church to be wed and she basted away. John when I turned to him was grinning from ear to ear. I telled Mary how it would be he said I knew what Mr Edward John was an old servant and had known his master when he was the cadet of the house therefore he often gave him his Christian name—I knew what Mr Edward would do and I was certain he would not wait long neither and he’s done right for aught I know. I wish you joy Miss! and he politely pulled his forelock. Thank you John. Mr Rochester told me to give you and Mary this. I put into his hand a five-pound note. Without waiting to hear more I left the kitchen. In passing the door of that sanctum some time after I caught the words— She’ll happen do better for him nor ony o’ t’ grand ladies. And again If she ben’t one o’ th’ handsomest she’s noan faâl and varry good-natured and i’ his een she’s fair beautiful onybody may see that. I wrote to Moor House and to Cambridge immediately to say what I had done fully explaining also why I had thus acted. Diana and Mary approved the step unreservedly. Diana announced that she would just give me time to get over the honeymoon and then she would come and see me. She had better not wait till then Jane said Mr Rochester when I read her letter to him if she does she will be too late for our honeymoon will shine our life long its beams will only fade over your grave or mine. How St. John received the news I don’t know he never answered the letter in which I communicated it yet six months after he wrote to me without however mentioning Mr Rochester’s name or alluding to my marriage. His letter was then calm and though very serious kind. He has maintained a regular though not frequent correspondence ever since he hopes I am happy and trusts I am not of those who live without God in the world and only mind earthly things. You have not quite forgotten little Adèle have you reader? I had not I soon asked and obtained leave of Mr Rochester to go and see her at the school where he had placed her. Her frantic joy at beholding me again moved me much. She looked pale and thin she said she was not happy. I found the rules of the establishment were too strict its course of study too severe for a child of her age I took her home with me. I meant to become her governess once more but I soon found this impracticable my time and cares were now required by another—my husband needed them all. So I sought out a school conducted on a more indulgent system and near enough to permit of my visiting her often and bringing her home sometimes. I took care she should never want for anything that could contribute to her comfort she soon settled in her new abode became very happy there and made fair progress in her studies. As she grew up a sound English education corrected in a great measure her French defects and when she left school I found in her a pleasing and obliging companion docile good-tempered and well-principled. By her grateful attention to me and mine she has long since well repaid any little kindness I ever had it in my power to offer her. My tale draws to its close one word respecting my experience of married life and one brief glance at the fortunes of those whose names have most frequently recurred in this narrative and I have done. I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest—blest beyond what language can express because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward’s society he knows none of mine any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms consequently we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude as gay as in company. We talk I believe all day long to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him all his confidence is devoted to me we are precisely suited in character—perfect concord is the result. Mr Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union perhaps it was that circumstance that drew us so very near—that knit us so very close for I was then his vision as I am still his right hand. Literally I was what he often called me the apple of his eye. He saw nature—he saw books through me and never did I weary of gazing for his behalf and of putting into words the effect of field tree town river cloud sunbeam—of the landscape before us of the weather round us—and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye. Never did I weary of reading to him never did I weary of conducting him where he wished to go of doing for him what he wished to be done. And there was a pleasure in my services most full most exquisite even though sad—because he claimed these services without painful shame or damping humiliation. He loved me so truly that he knew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance he felt I loved him so fondly that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes. One morning at the end of the two years as I was writing a letter to his dictation he came and bent over me and said—Jane have you a glittering ornament round your neck? I had a gold watch-chain I answered Yes. And have you a pale blue dress on? And have you a pale blue dress on? I had. He informed me then that for some time he had fancied the obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense and that now he was sure of it. He and I went up to London. He had the advice of an eminent oculist and he eventually recovered the sight of that one eye. He cannot now see very distinctly he cannot read or write much but he can find his way without being led by the hand the sky is no longer a blank to him—the earth no longer a void. When his first-born was put into his arms he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes as they once were—large brilliant and black. On that occasion he again with a full heart acknowledged that God had tempered judgment with mercy. My Edward and I then are happy and the more so because those we most love are happy likewise. Diana and Mary Rivers are both married alternately once every year they come to see us and we go to see them. Diana’s husband is a captain in the navy a gallant officer and a good man. Mary’s is a clergyman a college friend of her brother’s and from his attainments and principles worthy of the connection. Both Captain Fitzjames and Mr Wharton love their wives and are loved by them. As to St. John Rivers he left England he went to India. He entered on the path he had marked for himself he pursues it still. A more resolute indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks and dangers. Firm faithful and devoted full of energy and zeal and truth he labours for his race he clears their painful way to improvement he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He may be stern he may be exacting he may be ambitious yet but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the apostle who speaks but for Christ when he says—Whosoever will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. His is the ambition of the high master-spirit which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth—who stand without fault before the throne of God who share the last mighty victories of the Lamb who are called and chosen and faithful. St. John is unmarried he never will marry now. Himself has hitherto sufficed to the toil and the toil draws near its close his glorious sun hastens to its setting. The last letter I received from him drew from my eyes human tears and yet filled my heart with divine joy he anticipated his sure reward his incorruptible crown. I know that a stranger’s hand will write to me next to say that the good and faithful servant has been called at length into the joy of his Lord. And why weep for this? No fear of death will darken St. John’s last hour his mind will be unclouded his heart will be undaunted his hope will be sure his faith steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this— My Master he says has forewarned me. Daily He announces more distinctly—‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly respond—‘Amen even so come Lord Jesus!’ *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANE EYRE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY ***      Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works so the Foundation and you! can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. 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# divide chapters into sentences
from nltk.tokenize import PunktSentenceTokenizer
from functools import reduce
# nltk.download('punkt)

punkt = PunktSentenceTokenizer()

# this operation produces a list of lists of sentences (i.e. [["sentence 1", "sentence 2"], ["sentence 3", "sentence 4"]])
sents = [punkt.tokenize(ch) for ch in no_punct_chs]

# reduce the two-dimensional list into a one-dimensional list
sent_tokens = reduce(lambda x,y :x+y ,sents)


import pandas as pd
from nltk.corpus import stopwords
from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import CountVectorizer, TfidfVectorizer

stopwords = list(stopwords.words('english'))

# demonstrating some of the parameters within Count Vectorizer
vc = CountVectorizer(lowercase=True, 
                     stop_words=stopwords,
                     ngram_range=(2,2),
                    
                     min_df=0.001)

vectors = vc.fit_transform(sent_tokens)


print(vc.vocabulary_)

{'mrs reed': 54, 'drawing room': 10, 'right hand': 64, 'cannot tell': 2, 'john reed': 27, 'would soon': 85, 'never thought': 57, 'red room': 63, 'would say': 84, 'miss eyre': 35, 'said bessie': 65, 'ere long': 15, 'great deal': 21, 'let go': 29, 'would come': 79, 'jane eyre': 26, 'miss jane': 37, 'five minutes': 17, 'mr lloyd': 45, 'next day': 58, 'would like': 81, 'shall go': 70, 'came back': 1, 'half hour': 24, 'one day': 60, 'long time': 33, 'long way': 34, 'yes sir': 87, 'would rather': 83, 'shook head': 71, 'could see': 6, 'young ladies': 88, 'said mr': 66, 'first time': 16, 'said mrs': 67, 'good night': 19, 'ten minutes': 72, 'little girl': 32, 'mr brocklehurst': 43, 'miss temple': 41, 'come see': 4, 'well enough': 78, 'last night': 28, 'miss miller': 38, 'one side': 61, 'miss scatcherd': 40, 'could bear': 5, 'helen burns': 25, 'would never': 82, 'said nothing': 68, 'would take': 86, 'could tell': 7, 'let us': 30, 'would give': 80, 'two hours': 76, 'eight years': 12, 'mrs fairfax': 52, 'mr rochester': 49, 'dining room': 9, 'third storey': 73, 'thornfield hall': 74, 'one could': 59, 'grace poole': 20, 'drew near': 11, 'mr edward': 44, 'never mind': 56, 'must go': 55, 'see mr': 69, 'mrs poole': 53, 'colonel dent': 3, 'miss ingram': 36, 'mrs dent': 51, 'mr mason': 46, 'thousand pounds': 75, 'mr oliver': 47, 'mr st': 50, 'diana mary': 8, 'moor house': 42, 'mr rivers': 48, 'miss oliver': 39, 'go india': 18, 'project gutenberg': 62, 'united states': 77, 'gutenberg electronic': 22, 'electronic works': 14, 'electronic work': 13, 'gutenberg literary': 23, 'literary archive': 31, 'archive foundation': 0}


cols = vc.get_feature_names_out()
word_vect_df = pd.DataFrame(data=vectors.toarray(), columns=cols)
word_vect_df.sample(10)


word_vect_df.sum(axis=0).sort_values(ascending=False).head(20)

mr rochester         332
mrs fairfax          121
project gutenberg     85
mrs reed              81
miss temple           63
miss ingram           58
mr brocklehurst       45
miss eyre             45
jane eyre             38
yes sir               35
thornfield hall       33
mr rivers             33
diana mary            31
drawing room          26
could see             25
said mr               24
last night            23
miss miller           23
mr mason              23
mr st                 23
dtype: int64


import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

word_counts = word_vect_df.sum(axis=0).sort_values(ascending=False)
plt.barh(y=word_counts.index[:10], width=word_counts[:10])
plt.show()


tc = TfidfVectorizer(lowercase=True, 
                     stop_words=stopwords,
                     ngram_range=(2,2),
                     max_df=0.9,
                     min_df=0.1)

tc_vectors = tc.fit_transform(no_punct_chs)


tfidf_vect_df = pd.DataFrame(data=tc_vectors.toarray(), columns=tc.get_feature_names_out())
tfidf_vect_df.sample(10)


tfidf_vect_df.mean(axis=0).sort_values(ascending=False).head(20)

mr rochester       0.254307
st john            0.148947
mrs fairfax        0.116914
mrs reed           0.083966
miss temple        0.077260
miss ingram        0.062901
miss eyre          0.056189
mr rivers          0.054495
mr brocklehurst    0.046019
diana mary         0.041832
yes sir            0.041395
thornfield hall    0.040288
jane eyre          0.039254
mr st              0.036489
miss scatcherd     0.034366
helen burns        0.033323
mr mason           0.033289
last night         0.030306
miss jane          0.029874
could see          0.029271
dtype: float64


cvc = CountVectorizer(lowercase=True, 
                     stop_words=stopwords,
                     ngram_range=(1,1),
                    
                     min_df=0.001)

co_vectors = cvc.fit_transform(sent_tokens)

# matrix manipulation 
co_matrix = (co_vectors.T * co_vectors)

# setting the diagonals to 0 since it will always be 1 when we're comparing the same words
co_matrix.setdiag(0)


co_cols = cvc.get_feature_names_out()
co_df = pd.DataFrame(data=co_matrix.toarray(), columns=co_cols, index=co_cols)
co_df.sample(10)


co_df['rochester'].sort_values(ascending=False).head(20)

mr         362
said        50
would       39
see         33
mrs         31
fairfax     28
could       25
heard       24
never       22
go          18
like        18
room        17
hand        17
one         16
well        16
yes         15
eyes        15
knew        15
adèle       15
long        14
Name: rochester, dtype: int64


import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv("https://unc-libraries-data.github.io/text_analysis_with_python/datasets/otb_training_set.csv")
df.info()

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 1785 entries, 0 to 1784
Data columns (total 12 columns):
 #   Column                  Non-Null Count  Dtype 
---  ------                  --------------  ----- 
 0   id                      1785 non-null   object
 1   source                  1785 non-null   object
 2   jim_crow                1785 non-null   int64 
 3   chapter_num             1785 non-null   int64 
 4   section_num             1785 non-null   int64 
 5   chapter_text            1785 non-null   object
 6   section_text            1785 non-null   object
 7   year                    1785 non-null   int64 
 8   type_private laws       1785 non-null   int64 
 9   type_public laws        1785 non-null   int64 
 10  type_public local laws  1785 non-null   int64 
 11  type_session laws       1785 non-null   int64 
dtypes: int64(8), object(4)
memory usage: 167.5+ KB


df.jim_crow.value_counts()

jim_crow
0    1273
1     512
Name: count, dtype: int64


df.source.value_counts()

source
project experts    1673
paschal              74
murray               38
Name: count, dtype: int64


target = df["jim_crow"]


features = df.loc[:, "section_text" : "type_session laws"]
features.info()

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 1785 entries, 0 to 1784
Data columns (total 6 columns):
 #   Column                  Non-Null Count  Dtype 
---  ------                  --------------  ----- 
 0   section_text            1785 non-null   object
 1   year                    1785 non-null   int64 
 2   type_private laws       1785 non-null   int64 
 3   type_public laws        1785 non-null   int64 
 4   type_public local laws  1785 non-null   int64 
 5   type_session laws       1785 non-null   int64 
dtypes: int64(5), object(1)
memory usage: 83.8+ KB


import numpy as np
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split

X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(features, target, test_size = 0.2, random_state = 25)


from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import CountVectorizer
vec = CountVectorizer(decode_error = "ignore", min_df = 2, max_df = 1000)


X_train = vec.fit_transform(X_train.section_text)
X_test = vec.transform(X_test.section_text)


from sklearn.naive_bayes import MultinomialNB


nb = MultinomialNB()
nb.fit(X_train, y_train)

MultinomialNB()

MultinomialNB()


preds = nb.predict(X_test)


from sklearn.metrics import confusion_matrix, classification_report
import seaborn as sns

data = confusion_matrix(y_test, preds)
df_cm = pd.DataFrame(data, columns=np.unique(y_test), index = np.unique(y_test))
df_cm.index.name = 'Actual'
df_cm.columns.name = 'Predicted'

ax = sns.heatmap(df_cm,xticklabels=True, annot=True, fmt='.0f')


import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv('https://unc-libraries-data.github.io/text_analysis_with_python/datasets/chatgpt_sentiment_sample.csv', encoding='utf-8')


df.shape

(50000, 3)


df.sample(10)


#! pip install textblob
from textblob import TextBlob

# simple example of TextBlob
example_tweet = TextBlob(df.tweets[22747])

example_tweet.sentiment_assessments

Sentiment(polarity=0.3833333333333333, subjectivity=0.5266666666666667, assessments=[(['very', 'politically'], 0.0, 0.13, None), (['good'], 0.7, 0.6000000000000001, None), (['becoming'], 0.45, 0.8500000000000001, None)])


df.tweets[22747]

'#chatgpt is very politically correct. this is good. keeps it from becoming biased. https://t.co/GcFjacvpYk'


# method to return the sentiment scores for a given text
def textblob_scores(text):
    try:
        return TextBlob(text).sentiment
    except:
        dict() # returns an empty dictionary if there is an issue with the text


# find the sentiment polarity/subjectivity scores for all the tweets in our sample dataframe
tweets_txtblob = df.tweets.apply(textblob_scores).apply(pd.Series)

# creates new columns in with those scores 
tweet_scores = pd.concat([df, tweets_txtblob], axis =1)


# renames columns so we can make sense of them 
tweet_scores.rename(columns={0: 'textblob_polarity', 1: 'textblob_subjectivity'}, inplace=True)

tweet_scores.sample(5)


import nltk
from nltk.sentiment.vader import SentimentIntensityAnalyzer
nltk.download('vader_lexicon')

# initialize the Sentiment Intensity Analyzer
sid = SentimentIntensityAnalyzer()

[nltk_data] Downloading package vader_lexicon to
[nltk_data]     C:\Users\rolando\AppData\Roaming\nltk_data...
[nltk_data]   Package vader_lexicon is already up-to-date!


print(f"Score for 'sad': {sid.lexicon['sad']}")
print(f"Score for 'happy': {sid.lexicon['happy']}")

Score for 'sad': -2.1
Score for 'happy': 2.7


input_text = ["that was good", "that was GOOD" ,"that was good!", "that was good!!", 
              "that was good!!!", "that was extremely good", "that was good, but not great"]

pd.DataFrame([{'input':text} | sid.polarity_scores(text) for text in input_text])


def vader_scores(text):
    try:
        return sid.polarity_scores(text)
    except:
        return dict()


tweets_vader = df.tweets.apply(vader_scores).apply(pd.Series)
tweet_scores = pd.concat([tweet_scores, tweets_vader], axis =1)


tweet_scores.rename(columns={"neg": "vader_neg", "neu": "vader_neu", "pos": "vader_pos", "compound":"vader_compound"}, inplace=True)


tweet_scores.sample(10)


bestlist = tweet_scores.sort_values("vader_compound", ascending=False).tweets.tolist()
print(bestlist[0])

Dear friends and colleagues! I wish you a wonderful festive time, health, happiness, and professional success! To celebrate with #AI, I asked #chatGPT to write me a romantic Xmas poem, and it was lovely https://t.co/CeZk9ObNsc 😀 All the best! Elena https://t.co/UC2u3L84nh


worstlist = tweet_scores.sort_values("vader_compound", ascending=True).tweets.tolist()
print(worstlist[0])

pov\nits ur rotation of the sun\nu have a large spine dat hurts (boohoo)\nu stay in bed til 9 cause cozy\ngets out of bed\nchatgpt not solving mystery\nblender rass =crap\nFever gone but itchy. Hungry and eat doggy food. Itchy itchy Scott came. Ugly face so killed him. Tasty. 4. Itchy.


import seaborn as sns

sns.regplot(data = tweet_scores, x="textblob_polarity", y = "vader_compound", scatter_kws = {"alpha":0.05})

<Axes: xlabel='textblob_polarity', ylabel='vader_compound'>

	actually took	adèle came	almost like	already made	another time	answer question	answered yes	anything else	arms round	...	years since	yes right	yes sir	yet could	yet know	yet said	young ladies	young lady
8	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.086325	...	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000
25	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.056861	0.000000	...	0.000000	0.000000	0.072814	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000
4	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.047285	0.000000	0.000000	...	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000
21	0.104696	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	...	0.000000	0.000000	0.067035	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000
22	0.000000	0.081916	0.000000	0.081916	0.081916	0.000000	0.081916	0.000000	0.000000	...	0.000000	0.000000	0.262247	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000
20	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	...	0.051704	0.000000	0.140828	0.000000	0.054986	0.054986	0.212535	0.000000
36	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.063317	0.000000	0.000000	0.056341	...	0.000000	0.063317	0.162163	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.051131
30	0.000000	0.000000	0.109129	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	...	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000
19	0.000000	0.000000	0.055463	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	...	0.000000	0.000000	0.177562	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000
18	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.091688	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	...	0.000000	0.000000	0.176120	0.091688	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000	0.000000

	Unnamed: 0	tweets	labels
44448	191781	Is ChatGPT Conscious? \| Artificial Intelligenc...	neutral
7393	35233	Open AI should publish their ChatGPT model acc...	bad
37838	51877	Told ChatGPT that ⁦@elonmusk⁩ looks Chinese an...	bad
14345	3941	Yesterday on Dec. 1, My GPT-3 trial ended. Yes...	good
15748	163183	ChatGPT a powerful tool for education if used ...	neutral
2112	46947	Show HN: Help, I let ChatGPT control my comput...	neutral
23107	217753	In 2023, ChatGPT your reels. Editing takes time!	bad
14904	186000	It's that time of year again when I list the m...	good
17708	172125	"I used to #ChatGPT to do my holiday shopping"...	neutral
22502	19943	I tried ChatGPT from OpenAI and my mind was bl...	bad

	Unnamed: 0	tweets	labels	textblob_polarity	textblob_subjectivity
36123	171455	I just posted "How to Use ChatGPT To Optimize ...	neutral	0.0	0.000
10326	135930	#ChatGPT Try this now. https://t.co/WB63ICrNfS	bad	0.0	0.000
34104	150500	Exclusive: ChatGPT owner OpenAI projects $1 bi...	neutral	0.0	0.000
31877	66162	With ChatGPT traditional coding interviews are...	bad	-0.1	0.575
23395	9845	Asking #ChatGPT to make some generative ambien...	bad	0.0	0.000

	input	neg	neu	pos	compound
0	that was good	0.000	0.408	0.592	0.4404
1	that was GOOD	0.000	0.355	0.645	0.5622
2	that was good!	0.000	0.385	0.615	0.4926
3	that was good!!	0.000	0.365	0.635	0.5399
4	that was good!!!	0.000	0.346	0.654	0.5826
5	that was extremely good	0.000	0.484	0.516	0.4927
6	that was good, but not great	0.427	0.385	0.188	-0.5409

	Unnamed: 0	tweets	labels	textblob_polarity	textblob_subjectivity	vader_neg	vader_neu	vader_pos	vader_compound
6299	189538	I asked the 2 questions to AI.\n\n1) If rainbo...	neutral	0.350000	0.558333	0.000	1.000	0.000	0.0000
43084	9853	Can you help me to write an abstract for a sin...	neutral	0.000000	0.000000	0.000	0.828	0.172	0.4019
10117	142701	If ChatGPT can write your post outline for you...	neutral	0.375000	0.416667	0.097	0.903	0.000	-0.3089
2881	188822	#ChatGPT instantly responds to writing prompts...	neutral	0.133333	0.388889	0.000	0.925	0.075	0.3612
25614	166151	If I could give Alexa the voice of GLaDOS and ...	good	0.400000	0.900000	0.000	0.795	0.205	0.5574
49433	49524	‘Like We Just Split the Atom’: ChatGPT AI Shak...	neutral	0.000000	0.000000	0.000	1.000	0.000	0.0000
18748	126439	#ChatGPT seems good at re-evaluating and respo...	good	0.850000	0.800000	0.000	0.869	0.131	0.7351
32541	50356	who’d notice if they replaced trump truth soci...	neutral	0.033333	0.066667	0.000	0.827	0.173	0.3182
44125	145230	ChatGPT is what Siri should be	bad	0.000000	0.000000	0.000	1.000	0.000	0.0000
13446	70670	VIVIDESIGN Group The Brilliance and Weirdness ...	neutral	0.000000	0.000000	0.120	0.633	0.247	0.4588

Text Analysis With Python¶

Be sure you have the following packages installed¶

Python Packages often used for Text Analysis¶

Mini-project 1: Word Frequencies¶

Data: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë ¶

1. Load in text¶

2. Processing the text¶

3. Vectorize Text¶

Term Co-Occurance¶

Mini-project 2: Classification¶

Data: On the Books Laws ¶

About the Data¶

Supervised Classification¶

Create Testing & Training Sets¶

Vectorize the text¶

Train a Model¶

Test the Model¶

Mini-project 3: Sentiment Analysis¶

1. Importing ChatGPT twitter data¶

1. Simple Sentiment Analysis using Textblob¶

2. Sentiment Analysis using NLTK¶

Additional Resources¶

	archive foundation	came back	cannot tell	colonel dent	come see	could bear	could see	could tell	diana mary	dining room	...	would come	would give	would like	would never	would rather	would say	would soon	would take	yes sir	young ladies
1622	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2908	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
3962	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
7089	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
5948	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2611	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2662	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2737	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
1476	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
8881	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

	abbot	able	absence	accent	accept	access	account	...	year	years	yes	yesterday	yet	yield	yonder	young	youth
remember	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	1	1	0	3	0	1	1	0
amy	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0
something	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	4	1	0	0	0
hope	1	1	0	0	0	1	0	...	1	1	1	1	6	1	0	0	1
nurse	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0
figure	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
address	0	0	0	0	1	0	1	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0
stirred	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	...	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
hollow	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
sorry	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	...	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0

Text Analysis With Python¶

Be sure you have the following packages installed¶

Python Packages often used for Text Analysis¶

Mini-project 1: Word Frequencies¶

Data: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë¶

1. Load in text¶

2. Processing the text¶

3. Vectorize Text¶

Term Co-Occurance¶

Mini-project 2: Classification¶

Data: On the Books Laws¶

About the Data¶

Supervised Classification¶

Create Testing & Training Sets¶

Vectorize the text¶

Train a Model¶

Test the Model¶

Mini-project 3: Sentiment Analysis¶

1. Importing ChatGPT twitter data¶

1. Simple Sentiment Analysis using Textblob¶

2. Sentiment Analysis using NLTK¶

Additional Resources¶

Data: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë ¶

Data: On the Books Laws ¶